Northvolt has announced it plans to build its third European battery gigafactory in Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany.
The Northvolt Drei facility will have a potential production capacity of 60GWh, bringing its pipeline of battery manufacturing capacity under development to more than 170GWh.
The firm plans to produce its first batteries at the plant in 2025.
Schleswig-Holstein was chosen due to the region hosting Germany’s cleanest energy grid, which uses power generated by onshore and offshore wind power and is reinforced by clean energy provided through grid interconnections to Denmark and Norway.
Peter Carlsson, co-founder and CEO of 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.
“Our philosophy is that new energy-intensive industries, such as battery manufacturing, should be established in actual geographical proximity to where the clean energy is produced.”
Northvolt Drei factory will source raw material requirements from recycled battery metals, as part of Northvolt’s commitment to source 50% of its raw material needs from recycling by 2030.
Alongside battery production, Northvolt Drei will target an on-site battery recycling plant.
European battery manufacturing
In February, vehicle OEM Volvo Cars and Northvolt announced they had selected Gothenburg, Sweden, to build a battery manufacturing plant, which could have a capacity of up to 50GWh.
Construction is due to begin next year, with commissioning scheduled for 2025.
Once completed the plant could supply batteries for around half a million cars per year— useful as Volvo’ electrification strategy includes the goal of producing and selling only fully electric cars by 2030.
In January, Northvolt assembled the first lithium-ion cell to have been fully designed, developed and assembled by a homegrown European battery company.
The prismatic cell came off the cell assembly line on the 28 December following the commissioning of Northvolt Ett’s gigafactory in Skellefteå, Sweden.
It represented a milestone for Northvolt, which aims to begin commercial delivery of cells of varying formats this year.
Commissioning and upscaling of the Skellefteå factory will continue through 2022, when the first commercial customer deliveries will be made.
In February 2021, Northvolt laid out plans to build a new 50,000m2 factory in Gdańsk, Poland, following their start up of a battery systems industrialisation plant in Gdańsk in 2019. The initial phase of construction began last autumn, with commissioning due this year.
The first phase aims to establish an annual output of 5GWh of module packs. The second phase will potentially ramp it up to 12GWh.
