Northvolt plans to build its third battery gigafactory

On Tuesday, Northwolt announced its plans to develop its third lithium-ion battery plant in Heide, northern Germany.

Notably, the Swedish company anticipated the facility to have an annual capacity of 60-gigawatt hours (GWh).

It already closed a memorandum of understanding with Schleswig-Holstein state and the Heide region for the development of the factory.

In line with this, the battery developer expected it to produce its first outputs in late 2025.

Northvolt, Volkswagen’s most prominent owner, also targets an on-site battery recycling plant. This will ensure the efficient reuse of byproducts from the production process.

The new gigafactory will also elevate the firm’s pipeline of battery manufacturing capacity under development to over 170-GWh.This announcement marked its third battery gigaplant.

Subsequently, it built its primary factory in the small, industrial town of Skelleftea, northeast Sweden. The location is the central cluster of mines and mineral resources.

It is where it assembled its initial battery cell in December. This achievement made it the first European firm to design and manufacture a battery on the continent.

The business also targets a production capacity of 60-GWh for the Skelleftea plant. In addition,  it aims for at least a 20.00% to 25.00% market share in Europe by 2030.

Northvolt’s second factory is in Gothenburg in western Sweden. It is a joint venture with the luxury vehicles firm Volvo Cars, with a total investment of $3.30 billion.

This 50-gigawatt-hour (GWh) plant will create up to 3,000 jobs as it will begin operations in 2025.

Volvo Cars, majority-owned by China’s Geely Holding, prospects to sell 50.00% electric cars entirely by 2030.

Consequently, it obtained over $50.00 billion worth of contracts from leading automotive manufacturers such as BMW, Fluence, and Scania.

Northvolt to rival Tesla, Ford, Asian players

Northvolt will compete with the sector’s leading players as battery makers scramble to keep up with high demand.

At present, carmakers have switched to electric to decrease planet-warming carbon emissions.

Earlier this month, Japan’s Panasonic said it would purchase land in the United States for a mega-factory. The facility will make a new type of EV battery for Tesla Inc.

It plans to begin mass-producing the new type of lithium-ion battery for the leading automotive firm before the end of 2024.

On Monday, Ford mentioned building an EV battery plant in Turkey with South Korean firm SK. Subsequently, the plant facility aims to have 30 to 45 gigawatt-hours annual production capacity.