Europe’s great battery hope Northvolt is fighting for survival
Europe’s great battery hope Northvolt is fighting for survival
cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/42670458
15 billion? I thought industrial projects usually cost about 1-5 billion. Is it really that much bigger than other big projects?
They are claiming potential sabotage by a Chinese company supplying machines. Not sure I buy that, but it's interesting. I'll see if I can find the link.
Edit. Not where I read it, but it's in English so it'll have to do. https://www.resetera.com/threads/massive-swedish-battery-producer-northvolt-could-be-facing-sabotage-by-chinese-government.981816/
The whole setting of Chinese machines that need Chinese personnel and contain unknown components sounds reasonable. But even the source, a blog named Cornucopia hazards that it's all unverified.
Cornucopia, auto-translated from Swedish:
Over to the West and Skelleftea. The company Northvolt is probably beyond all rescue and no capital injections from the West can change this. According to credible and controlled direct information for the blog, you have been blown away by your major Chinese machine supplier Wuxi Lead and the manufacturing machines simply do not work without Chinese benevolence. One can speculate that the bankruptcy estate will be bought by Chinese actors, after which the factory in Skellefteå will quickly start to work.
The information the blog has taken note of is detailed, but to protect sources I will only summarize.
Northvolt has purchased manufacturing machines for lithium-ion batteries from Chinese Wuxi Lead, but the deliveries have had parts of the documentation deleted, other information about the systems has not been disclosed at all, and there have been many other things that have not been correct in the machines, including that there is installed undocumented technology that can be suspected to be used for remote control from China. The machines have simplified only been able to run with Wuxi Leads own Chinese operators on site in Sweden and the transfer of knowledge has been, to say the least, flawed and reluctant. This makes Northvolt’s production in the small pilot plant in Västerås while there have been enormous problems in full-scale Skellefteå.
The bankruptcy is now about whether you will be able to pay out the next round of wages and can be within a month ahead, or even already on September 25. But the clock is the best. It usually take time for large companies to go bankrupt.
It looks like Wuxi Lead has initially sabotaged and opposed operations but got paid billions for its machines. One can suspect that the intention is to lower Northvolt and that Chinese actors then buy up the bankruptcy estate, whereupon the production lines will quickly start to work – possibly with Chinese staff, but within the EU customs walls, paid by Swedish investors and Swedish government support. It does not help with additional billions or state ownership in Northvolt – production will not work as long as the Chinese do not want it. The company Northvolt is blown, deceived and run. However, the factories in Chinese ownership can live on and make it work.
The management in Northvolt has known about the problems with Wuxi Leads equipment but has continued anyway with full-scale delivery without having caused the machines to work before, probably naive Swedish in the belief that it has to do with a benevolent supplier.
It's not just the Dand who can blow the Swede.
It is now up to any journalist to dig further into this. I don't have the whole picture, of course I only share, but the parts I have look like I'm be credible.
so they knew about the problems and still continued?
Eh? I thought their value proposition was in-house developed sodium-ion batteries?
If they just build standard lithium-ion with Chinese equippent, then I don't see the point. We can just import that more cheaply from China directly.
I don't think they ever worked on Na-ion. I do see references to Li-ion and Li-metal (R&D) batteries.