The Unlikely Partnership of François-Philippe Champagne and Peter Carlsson – A Look Inside the Northvolt Project

2023-12-23 10:00:00

François-Philippe Champagne and Peter Carlsson – one of the co-founders of Northvolt – were not destined to meet. In March 2022, the minister was on vacation, while the businessman planned a trip to New York to meet investors. Their plans will be turned upside down by a phone call.

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“As they say in good French, it started with a cold callsays Mr. Champagne, in an interview with The Press. We didn’t know each other. I just had his phone number. I told him: “it would be interesting to talk, I saw what you want to do, it seems interesting to me”. »

He learned of Northvolt’s North American ambitions through an article in Financial Times the publication of which dates back to December 2021. The portrait presents the young company as the leading European manufacturer of battery cells – the last step before battery assembly. Its investors are well known: Volkswagen, BMW and Volvo, to name a few. One element particularly piques the minister’s curiosity: the company, which aims to compete with giants like Panasonic (Japan), CATL (China) and LG (South Korea), wants to set up in North America.

“Not everyone gets up in the morning thinking about Canada,” the minister likes to say. Northvolt is a good example. Mr. Champagne decides to give it a try. To reach Mr. Carlsson, he turned to an acquaintance: Swedish businessman Marcus Wallenberg. Aged 67, the latter is well known in this Scandinavian country. He sits on no fewer than nine boards of directors. He is notably at the head of that of the Swedish automobile manufacturer Saab.

What is a battery cell?

The lithium-ion battery found in a car is essentially an assembly of individual battery units, called cells. They are connected in series by an electronic circuit. The number and size of each cell helps determine the amount of electricity that an electric vehicle battery is able to store.

The two men know each other well. Before making the jump to federal politics in 2015, Mr. Champagne spent two decades in the private sector, a journey which took him notably to Italy, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Their paths crossed in particular at the Swiss multinational ABB, where the minister was vice-president and senior lawyer between 1999 and 2007. The Wallenberg family has always been among the main shareholders.

At this time, Northvolt is busy drawing up a list of 70 potential sites in the United States to determine where it will locate its mega-factory. Canada is a long way off and is not yet considered seriously. Mr. Champagne nevertheless piques the curiosity of his interlocutor and the two men agree to a time to get to know each other in person.

Mr. Carlsson, who was to go to the United States, made a detour through Montreal, where he stopped at the Fairmont The Queen Elizabeth. The discussion between the two men will take place at Rosélys, the main restaurant of the chic city center hotel, on March 6, 2022. A meeting lasting a few hours.

« Il [Peter Carlsson] was going to meet investors from Goldman Sachs in New York, says Mr. Champagne. I was on vacation. We each agreed to change our plans. I convinced my partner to let me leave my vacation to go to dinner at the Queen Elizabeth on a Sunday. I made sure we had good service. That’s really how it all started. »

Mr. Champagne no longer remembers exactly the number of guests, but the two men are not alone around the table. On the menu, fish and wine. The minister’s objective: to convince two former protégés of Elon Musk at Tesla in the early 2010s to broaden their horizons and not consider an automatic return to the United States.

It wasn’t intuitive for them. People, when they think about coming to North America, they default to thinking about the United States. Our job, often, is to show them what we have north of the border.

François-Philippe Champagne, Federal Minister of Innovation, Science and Industry

The minister notably succeeds in arguing that it is Quebec, with its renewable electricity, which is the place to “build the greenest battery in the world”. However, a major handicap arrives in the decor: theInflation Reduction Act (IRA), this law from the Biden administration promulgated on August 16, 2022. It has an envelope of US 370 billion to support projects aimed at combating climate change, such as those in the battery sector for electric vehicles.

“It was a catalyst, that’s clear,” underlines Paolo Cerruti, co-founder of the company and president and CEO of Northvolt North America, in an interview in French. It was a big deal to take and our competitors were already placing their pieces on the board. Speed of execution was essential. »

PHOTO MARTIN TREMBLAY, THE PRESS

Northvolt North America President Paolo Cerruti

The Trudeau government ended up responding to the American offensive, but by selecting its projects instead of offering aid to virtually all businesses. Three complexes will end up benefiting here: Volkswagen (Ontario), Stellantis (Ontario) and Northvolt (Quebec).

In the months following the meeting between MM. Champagne and Carlsson, Northvolt continues its evaluation of potential sites in the United States. The list gets smaller as the months go by. Meanwhile, Mr. Cerruti arrives in the scene. It is to him that the company’s board of directors entrusts the mandate to carry out the company’s North American breakthrough.

A sign of the seriousness of the approach, Mr. Cerruti is ready to come and settle on this side of the Atlantic to fulfill his mandate. He still doesn’t know that he will be moving to Quebec.

Northvolt a letter