In Skellefteå, Northvolt fights for his survival.
In Norway’s Mo i Rana, a giant battery factory is ready – without being used.
Voices are now being raised to reconsider the view of the free market, to cope with the competition against the USA and China, and to have our own production of the increasingly important batteries in terms of security policy.
Deep inside the northern Norwegian Ranfjord is Mo i Rana with 20,000 inhabitants. The city had hoped to grow through green industry. One of the latest to experience that it has not caught on is the chemical engineer Sams Navith Segu Jalaludeen from India. He moved here in August to work at battery manufacturer Freyr’s pilot plant. Within just a few days, he was fired. Now he borrows the company’s office premises to look for a new job.
– Either I need to find a new job or move. These are not great times, says Sam’s Navith Segu Jalaludeen.
Adaptation to the battery market
The late summer downsizing was described as a necessary adaptation to the battery market. With it, Freyr has now paused all battery cell manufacturing in Mo i Rana and is only dedicated to technology development with approximately 25 employees. Their original dreams, however, were gigantic.
In the city’s industrial park, the 86,000-square-meter Giga Arctic factory is fully built and unused. According to the original plan, it would be 146,000 square meters. Everything was paused when the US introduced heavy subsidies to green industries. For Freyr, it then became financially unavoidable not to instead invest in the company’s planned factory in Georgia.
– When you have the price of 35 dollars per kilowatt hour in the USA, and a China that produces for down to 43 dollars per kilowatt hour, and itself has to produce in Europe, Norway, for upwards of 100 dollars… It doesn’t work, says Hilde Rønningsen, director of communications Freyr.
Can rent out the factory
Giga Arctic is kept heated so that it can be used as soon as a need arises. Battery cell manufacturing is unlikely at this point, but Freyr is considering using it for packing batteries or some other phase of the manufacturing chain. Or rent out to other companies.
In a situation where China provides large subsidies and has advanced in development, Freyr’s communications director believes that Europe must reconsider its view of the free market, because European companies are no longer competing on the same terms.
Either subsidies or tariffs
– It’s either subsidies or customs walls. It is probably one of the things that could have an effect on this, says Hilde Rønningsen, Communications Director Freyr.
Mo i Rana’s local business association does not want to be so specific. But given the crisis in Northvolt, it is agreed that something is done when the world is to be electrified.
– It is important to answer the big questions – how should European industry get through the green transition? How should we create robust competitiveness for the green industry, also for areas here in the Nordics and northern Europe? says Ingvild Skogvold, daily manager of the Rana business association.