Northvolt likely to receive bridging aid

The Swedish publication Dagens industri reports this, citing internal sources. While the capital now secured is only sufficient to bridge a short period of time, a package with a volume of possibly more than 300 million dollars could be put together by the end of the month, the Swedish business magazine quotes an insider. This would secure Northvolt’s liquidity into the coming year. There were already increasing indications last week that a consortium of investors could support Northvolt.

The news agency Bloomberg reported that the investment subsidiary of the US-American bank Goldman Sachs was considering becoming active together with other investors, whereby a possible commitment would also depend on the support of other investors. The report also referred to insiders in this regard. Goldman Sachs Asset Management is Northvolt’s second-largest shareholder and, according to Bloomberg, is actively involved in finding a solution to the Swedish battery manufacturer’s liquidity crisis.

A few days earlier, the company announced that it was making progress with the financing package and was continuing to work “intensively” on a solution. In the meantime, co-founder Harald Mix announced in a Swedish newspaper commentary that he had provided more than 1.5 billion Swedish kronor (around 130 million euros) in fresh capital.

The situation surrounding Northvolt has come to a head since the summer. At that time, it became known that shareholder BMW had cancelled an order for battery cells worth billions because the Swedish company was behind schedule and BMW would no longer need the prismatic cells. The Munich-based company is switching to cylindrical cells for the upcoming electric cars in the’ Neue Klasse’. The events surrounding the BMW order then led to founder and CEO Peter Carlsson admitting that he had been “a little too aggressive” with his expansion plan. The focus was therefore placed on supplying customers from the first Northvolt Gigafactory site in Skellefteå – further expansion was put to the test.

However, this was just the start of a whole series of changes. A new CFO, Pia Aaltonen-Forsell, was appointed in July, as her predecessor Alexander Hartman is to revise these expansion plans as Chief Transformation Officer. The newly formed management team has also decided to make its first cuts: In August, the research centre in California, which Northvolt had taken over in 2021 along with Cuberg, was closed down. In September, ancillary businesses such as cathode material production and a plant for battery storage were deprioritised to strengthen the core business – the production of battery cells. At three Swedish sites, 1,600 jobs will be cut, representing 25 per cent of the jobs there and 20 per cent of all jobs at Northvolt. At the beginning of October, it was then announced that the subsidiary Northvolt Ett Expansion AB, which was responsible for the cancelled factory expansion, had filed for insolvency.

di.se (in Swedish, paywall), reuters.com