The Swedish cell manufacturer Northvolt was long regarded as the hope of the European battery industry, but has been in insolvency proceedings since March and is currently having to cease production. There are now three potential buyers and an initial takeover bid, although this is still non-binding.
As insolvency administrator Michael Kubu said on Swedish radio on Tuesday, “We now have an indicative offer on the table and hope for more indicative. We expect to receive another indicative offer during the day.” It is a foreign investor who now wants to buy the entire bankruptcy estate. However, Kubu did not name a specific company.
The non-binding offer should be the prelude to more concrete negotiations. At the same time, the insolvency administrator emphasised that time was short and that the problem was that fewer and fewer employees were available. A buyer would, of course, not only want to buy machines but would also need the appropriate staff on site. It is therefore still a race against time, Kubu told Swedish radio.
The bankruptcy estate includes the main plant called Northvolt Ett in Skellefteå, where production will be stopped for the time being. It also includes the development centre called Northvolt Labs in Västerås, for which the truck manufacturer Scania wanted to put together a consortium to rescue it. And on top of that, the location of the planned battery factory in Heide, Schleswig-Holstein, whose construction is still being prepared, thanks to subsidies. A Northvolt spokesperson told the news agency dpa: “It shows that there is still great interest in the site in Heide.”
According to Michael Kubu, this is the first time that an investor has shown interest in the entire Northvolt company and not just in individual components. This is because Northvolt had already disposed of a number of assets in the course of the financial turbulence: Volvo Cars acquired all shares in the battery cell joint venture Novo Energy, Scania bought the battery module production in Gdansk, Poland, as well as a research and development centre in Tomteboda near Stockholm from Northvolt Systems Industrial. And US battery developer Lyten has taken over the Californian battery production facilities of Northvolt subsidiary Cuberg.
In the evening, insolvency administrator Kubu told the Swedish television station SVT that there are currently three potential buyers for the entire company, but only one has so far submitted a purchase offer. Kubu did not want to reveal which companies were involved, only revealing that all three were not from Sweden. Kubu did not specify whether they all came from Europe. According to SVT, however, a Chinese buyer should be ruled out, as the supervisory authority for strategic products (ISP) has denied Chinese ownership of comparable activities.
SVT continues to reveal interesting details from the insolvency proceedings: According to documents from the Stockholm District Court, Northvolt’s debts amount to well over 80 billion kronor – the equivalent of over 7.2 billion euros. At the same time, the assets of Northvolt AB and Northvolt Ett, the main plant in Skellefteå, are estimated at just over two billion kronor, or over 180 million euros.
sverigesradio.se, svt.se (both in Swedish), reuters.com
