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Two workers have died in separate accidents at Northvolt’s battery gigafactory in northern Sweden, casting a shadow over Europe’s leading start-up in the sector.
A 25-year-old Northvolt employee died on Friday after suffering severe burns in early November following an explosion on a production line.
Separately, a man in his 60s working for construction company NCC died after an accident involving a crane used to extend Northvolt’s battery factory in Skellefteå, just below the Arctic Circle in Sweden.
“This is a dark day,” said Peter Carlsson, Northvolt’s chief executive and co-founder.
Northvolt was the first homegrown European company to produce a battery cell from a gigafactory, in December 2021 in Skellefteå.
The site is one of Sweden’s largest construction projects, with new production lines being built and opened continually as Northvolt aims to produce 60 gigawatt hours of batteries a year — enough to power about 1mn cars.
The accident involving the crane on Thursday also seriously injured a second worker for NCC in his 20s. Police are investigating the incident and have cordoned off the construction site. NCC is also conducting its own probe into what happened.
Carlsson said of the two deaths: “We now come together in grief. The situation is devastating, and we are now working hour by hour to help each other through this.”
He called the Northvolt worker an “ambitious, positive and highly-regarded colleague, who it hurts incredibly to lose”.
Northvolt stopped the production line after that incident in November and undertook a safety review to ensure that such an explosion — which took place during regular maintenance — could not take place again. Production has since restarted.
The Swedish industrial start-up is ramping up production in Skellefteå at the same time as aiming to build three new gigafactories: one in central Sweden with Volvo Cars, one in Germany and another in Canada.
Started by two former Tesla executives in 2017, Northvolt is preparing for a potential IPO valuing it at about $20bn in Stockholm and is interviewing bankers. But investors are sceptical that the lossmaking company can list any time soon in the current market environment. Northvolt has raised more funding than any other European start-up, and is close to announcing more than €5bn in debt financing in the coming weeks.
The Swedish group also recently announced a breakthrough in battery technology for energy storage where it developed a sodium-ion cell that has no lithium, cobalt or nickel — all critical metals that are normally used and where China has an advantage.
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