Northvolt failed to meet plans by curtailing production at its battery cell plant in northern Sweden, according to Reuters.
Since early September, the company has consistently failed to meet weekly battery production targets deemed good enough to deliver to customers, according to two unpublished documents.
The documents state a target of 51,000 cells delivered in one week by the end of 2024. However, Northvolt said in response to the appeal that the targets were set on 5 September and were “long out of date.” The company also did not specify its current production targets, which it said were based on contracted customer deliveries.
Hailed as Europe’s best chance to weaken China’s overwhelming dominance of the electric vehicle (EV) battery market, Northvolt laid off a fifth of its global workforce and cut its operations in September to stay afloat. The Swedish company, headed by former Tesla executive Peter Carlsson, has yet to turn a profit.
Northvolt is discussing the possibility of filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US. The company lost a €2 billion ($2.1 billion) contract with BMW in June due to delays in deliveries and its inability to produce sufficient volumes of high-quality batteries.
The plan is currently under review based on the execution of our strategic review, which has influence on the way we operate our main facility Northvolt Ett.
The company publicly launched the strategic review in July and began publishing the results from 9 September. The main actions taken as part of the review included adjusting customer orders and reducing shifts.
This is a very challenging industry. However, we have made great progress through this year, to the point that today we are consistently, week-on-week producing high-performance cells for our customers.
In September, Northvolt said it had tripled its cell manufacturing volumes since the beginning of the year. However, weekly production reports showed that the company collected more than 51,000 serviceable batteries per week only once, between late August and early November.
For machines that are in serial production, we have very good levels of performance. Naturally, following installation we have a period of commissioning, during which machines are fine-tuned and calibrated.
Battery experts say that production levels can fluctuate on a weekly basis. Manufacturing batteries is a delicate process, and scaling it up is widely recognised by experts as a major challenge for any battery manufacturer. However, despite the challenges, Northvolt is still ahead of other European battery makers.
