Magnus Henrekson is a professor of economics at the Institute for Business Research and was an early critic of Northvolt's large battery industry initiative.
After the company filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, he is very doubtful that anyone will want to, or be able to, continue the battery production.
The large Chinese manufacturers do not seem interested in establishing operations there, even if they were to get the building for free, because they do not think it is built correctly and it does not fit, says Magnus Henrekson.
The owners are irresponsible
He does not think it is likely that another actor will want to step in either. Whoever takes over will have to start from scratch, he says.
It is a long way to learn and become good at these processes. Obviously, Northvolt has not managed to do so. It will also be much harder to get credit financing to build a battery factory or get a battery factory up and running now after this crash.
Magnus Henrekson thinks that Northvolt's owners have made many mistakes along the way to today's bankruptcy filing.
I think the most irresponsible thing was not to focus on learning how to industrially build good batteries in Skellefteå. Before they had even learned how to make batteries industrially in Skellefteå, they started building a factory in Borlänge, one in Gothenburg, one in Germany, one in Montreal, and even one in Texas.
Created an image
He also thinks that Skellefteå was the wrong place for the factory from the start, since the municipality did not have the capacity to absorb such a large establishment.
We saw an overheating. There were no homes, they pushed out other existing companies by taking their staff. The municipality and region have made a lot of investments in the hope of future tax bases and income from all the people working there – and they will not get that now.
There is only one thing he mentions that he thinks Northvolt's owners were good at.
They were obviously very skilled at creating an image that everything is so very good. And one can be surprised by the loyalty that has existed among employees not to go out and tell that things are not working.
