Northvolt said it had not yet made any final decisions on how many jobs the company might make redundant, but that it was going to have to make “difficult decisions on the size of our workforce” in order to meet its objective of focusing on large-scale cell manufacturing.

It said it had launched talks with trade unions to minimise the number of redundancies.

“As difficult as this will be, focusing on what is our core business paves the way for us to build a strong long-term foundation for growth that contributes to the Western ambitions to establish a homegrown battery industry,” Northvolt CEO and co-founded Peter Carlsson said.

It company said it would place operations at Northvolt Ett Upstream 1 cathode active material production facility “into care and maintenance until further notice”, also motivated by the need to cut costs. As previously announced, plans for a factory in Borlänge will be terminated.

“While conditions at this time are challenging, there remains no question that the global transition towards electrification – and the long-term outlook for cell manufacturers, including Northvolt – is strong,” said Carlsson.

Northvolt is the latest in the series of Swedish tech giants to struggle with the economic pressure of the past few years.

Swedish telecoms equipment company Ericsson said earlier this year it was cutting 8.6 percent of its Swedish workforce.

In early August, the Swedish Labour Ministry announced that the country was facing its highest unemployment rate in a decade, excluding the pandemic period.

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