Unable to secure the funding necessary to continue in its current form the company had been in crisis for some time and filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the US in November. That move came after the departure of its chief executive, Peter Carlsson, who said that Northvolt needed to raise up to $1.2bn to restore its business.
Founded in 2016 the company raised more than $10bn in equity, debt and public financing and its owners included the likes of Volkswagen and the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
Tom Johnstone, Northvolt’s current interim chair said that the company had been set up to be groundbreaking and to accelerate the transition to a greener and more sustainable future, but it appears that problems started to mount with its efforts to build a factory in northern Sweden - Europe’s first homegrown battery gigafactory.
Northvolt’s demise has been blamed on a combination of rising capital costs, geopolitical instability, supply chain disruptions, and shifts in market demand.
The company had already sought to cut costs and had announced 1,600 job cuts, while seeking to complete a restructuring of the business by the end of March.
In truth, however, Northvolt failed perhaps because it tried to do too much too soon.
Overly ambitious it ended up missing production targets, failing to produce sufficient numbers of high quality batteries.
