A decade ago, the future looked bleak in Skelleftea. In the town of 71,500 inhabitants, the size of Corsica, 800 kilometers north of the capital, Stockholm, most mines had closed. Those that still produced minerals had replaced men with machines. In search of a brighter future, the young people went south. In a burst, in 2015, the municipality set itself the objective of reaching 80,000 inhabitants by 2030. “But we knew it would be very hard”, admits the director of municipal services, Kristina Sundin Jonsson today.
This was without counting the miracle that occurred in the fall of 2017, when the Northvolt company, created two years earlier in Stockholm, chose Skelleftea, among 40 Swedish municipalities, to set up its “gigafactory” of electric batteries. At first, the locals only half believed it. The hill overlooking the construction site, to the east of the city, has been renamed “the hill of the skeptics”. The inhabitants have become accustomed to climbing there to follow the progress of the work. First, we had to cut down the trees over an area the size of 280 football pitches, then level the ground with explosives. On October 15, 2019, construction of the buildings could finally begin.
Two years later, the first battery cells, the size of a VHS tape, will be able to leave the factory. Northvolt announced in a press release, Wednesday, December 29, 2021, that it has assembled its first electric battery cell ” last night “. First, the Swedish group will produce 16 gigawatt hours (GWh) per year, enough to equip 300,000 electric vehicles each year. In 2023, the storage capacity will double, reaching, in a few years, 60 GWh, i.e. the possibility of equipping one million electric vehicles each year, making Northvolt1 the largest electric battery factory in Europe, whose list of customers include Volkswagen, BMW, Scania or Volvo Cars.
“Major impact for the world”
Fredrik Hedlund, vice-president of Northvolt, ensures the visit. This former strategy director at Sony Mobile, a native of southern Sweden, landed in Skelleftea in June, with his wife and the youngest of their three children. For a year and a half, he oversaw the construction of Volkswagen’s battery plant in Salzgitter, south of Hanover, launched as part of a partnership with Northvolt in 2019. In the spring, the Swedish resold its shares to the German manufacturer, which is also one of its main shareholders.
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