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Swedish battery start-up to build third factory in northern Germany

Battery group Northvolt announced Tuesday that it would build a battery factory in northern Germany, as Europe seeks to ramp up its capacity to produce electric cars.

A rendering of the planned Northvolt Drei battery factory
A rendering of the planned Northvolt Drei battery factory. Photo: Northvolt

The Swedish electric car battery specialist said it picked Heide in Germany’s northernmost state Schleswig-Holstein as it is known as a “clean energy valley” which is home to windfarms that would power the plant.

The new plant is expected to have an annual production capacity of 60 GWh — enough to supply around one million cars per year. The factory could start production in 2025 and provide some 3,000 jobs, the company said in a statement.

Northvolt opened its first “gigafactory” in Sweden in December and the Heide factory will take its battery manufacturing capacity under development above 170 GWh gigawatt hours.

Schleswig-Holstein was selected as the “region hosts the cleanest energy grid in Germany, one which is characterized by a surplus of electricity generated by onshore and offshore wind power”, Northvolt said.

“It matters how we produce a battery cell. If you use coal in your production, you embed a fair amount of CO2 into your battery, but if we use clean energy, we can build a very sustainable product,” Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson said.

One of Europe’s leading battery hopefuls, Northvolt has already secured $50 billion (44.6 billion euros) worth of orders from European car giants including Germany’s BMW and Volkswagen, and Sweden’s Volvo.

Faced with China, which dominates the market, Europe accounted for just three percent of world battery cell production in 2020 but aims to corner 25 percent of the market by the end of the decade, with several factory openings planned.

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Why North Korean hackers could leave Sweden short of alcohol this weekend

If you're thinking of quitting the booze, now may be a good time, as Sweden may run low on alcohol in just a few days.

Why North Korean hackers could leave Sweden short of alcohol this weekend

The reason? Problems down the distribution chain, as a result of a ransomware attack by a North Korean hacker group on Skanlog, a logistics firm that delivers to Sweden’s state-run alcohol monopoly Systembolaget, reports business site Dagens Industri.

Systembolaget confirmed to The Local that this may have a knock-on effect on supplies.

“This is one of our distributors, they deliver up to 25 percent of the alcohol. But we do have other suppliers as well, we have to scale up the deliveries. So I cannot say exactly what the shortage will look like in the stores,” Systembolaget press officer Sofia Sjöman Waas said.

Not only the weekend is coming up, but also Walpurgis Night on April 30th, a popular party day in university towns.

“It is too early to say what will happen. Small stores around the country have one delivery once a week and this might not affect you at all. Other stores have deliveries every day,” Sjöman Waas told The Local.

It’s unlikely that shelves will run completely dry, but some products – mostly wine, but also beer and liquor – may be out of stock.

“But in general our consumers don’t buy a lot. They come in, they buy a couple of bottles, and they consume it within a couple of days or a week,” said Sjöman Waas.

Article by Emma Löfgren and Gearóid Ó Droighneáin

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