At a meeting in January, Northvolt representatives said that funds would last until at least mid-February, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters. A third insider even spoke of sufficient funds until around the end of February. The person said that cost-cutting measures Northvolt had introduced at the end of 2024 helped the company stretch its funds. Some projects were terminated or sold off. More than 100 people are said to have attended the meeting.
In November, Northvolt CEO Peter Carlsson, who has since resigned, mentioned that the company needed 1.2 billion dollars in funding when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection under US bankruptcy law. The sum now stated is thus slightly higher. A variety of factors caused Northvolt’s financial difficulties. Firstly, the company has not yet been able to sufficiently scale up production in Sweden, which started in 2022. Secondly, the economic situation in general and the electric mobility sector in particular has deteriorated since then, so Northvolt could not obtain the necessary financing from investors.
It led to the application for creditor protection on 21 November 2024. At the time, Northvolt stated that the money available should last for around ten to eleven weeks – this period would expire in the coming week. In November, Northvolt had access to 245 million US dollars (including 100 million dollars as a loan from main customer Scania). At the beginning of January, Northvolt’s owners voted in favour of restructuring and thus against liquidating the company.
The construction of the Northvolt battery factory in Heide in northern Germany is not affected by the creditor protection proceedings for the Swedish parent company. The German subsidiary is sticking to its schedule of starting production in the second half of 2027 and then scaling up.
That is also possible thanks to a loan of around 600 million euros from the German development bank KfW – the federal government and the state of Schleswig-Holstein each provide half of the guarantee. However, there is a political dispute over this loan: the CDU and FDP are reportedly annoyed that Federal Economics Minister Robert Habeck (Green Party) has subsequently classified a report by auditors as secret. According to media reports, Habeck will discuss the matter before the Bundestag Budget Committee this Wednesday.
