Northvolt, the Swedish headquartered battery manufacturer founded by former Tesla supply chain VP Peter Carlsson has announced plans to open a battery assembly plant in the city of Gdansk, on Poland’s Baltic Sea coast.
The factory will operate as a partnership between Northvolt and battery manufacturer South Bay Solutions. Northvolt states that the factory will be state of the art, and will include an R&D center for storage solutions. The facility will manufacture full battery systems, ready for deployment: “Battery systems that will be produced are the full enclosure that delivers power to a final product, such as an energy storage solution or a mining machine,” reads a statement from the company. “They contain battery cells, an electronic control system and often a cooling and heating system.”
The factory is set to come online in 2019, with an initial capacity of 10,000 battery modules per year, and an initial 100 employees. Northvolt says that this capacity will be expanded as the company ramps up its production of battery cells, at a previously announced facility in Sweden, which is set to begin production in 2020.
“We have seen a rapid increase in interest for complete battery solutions from several of our key customer segments during the past year,” said Northvolt CEO Carlsson in a statement. “With this facility we will be able to meet that demand.”
The battery cell manufacturing facility was announced in 2017, and is currently being established in Skellefteå, in Northern Sweden. This factory has reportedly received more than €100 million in investments, from sources including Siemens, Volkswagen and the Swedish Government.
Northvolt has not revealed how much will be invested in the Polish factory, though a company spokesperson told Reuters this week that the investment would be smaller than that of the Swedish facility.
The location in Poland was chosen due to its proximity to a strong supply chain eco system, to labor markets and to end customers in continental Europe, as well as due to the fact that Northvolt sees a cluster of electromechanical industries emerging in this region of Poland.
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