Northvolt ditches plan for CAM giga-factory in Sweden, sells land

Swedish battery developer Northvolt AB has agreed to sell its industrial site in the municipality of Borlange, central Sweden, where it planned to repurpose the former Kvarnsveden paper mill and the surrounding area into a cathode active materials (CAM) factory.

The Borlange municipality said on Friday it had reached an agreement with Northvolt “after intensive negotiations” to buy the site for SEK 500 million (USD 48.2m/EUR 43.6m) and take over around 60 hectares (148.3 acres) of land. In a parallel deal, the municipality sold some 20 hectares of that land for SEK 400 million to EcoDataCenter, which will use the site to build a data centre facility.

"We have now secured land on the site in Kvarnsveden for future business establishments and continued development of the municipality," Erik Nises, Chairman of Borlange’s Municipal Board, said in Friday's press release.

Northvolt bought the Kvarnsveden site from Finnish-Swedish pulp and paper company Stora Enso Oyj (HEL:STERV) in 2022, intending to transform the facilities to establish CAM production with an annual capacity of some 100 GWh. The giga-factory, known as Northvolt Fem, was expected to commence operations in late 2024.

It emerged in June this year that Northvolt was abandoning factory plans for the Kvarnsveden site, as reported by Swedish business news outlet Dagen Industri. The battery maker clarified that it was reviewing plans for the gig-factory, but had not reached any decisions, according to a report by Reuters.

(SEK 10 = USD 0.964/EUR 0.873)

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