Four months after the official announcement of the launch of its 7 billion mega-factory project, Northvolt was able to resume deforestation work after a short interruption, but its CEO for North America, Paolo Cerruti, says he is surprised having been unfairly attacked on the fundamental values that his company defends. He intends to put Northvolt’s mission at the center of the message.
“This is the first time that we have been attacked in this way on our environmental commitment. Our mission is to accelerate the exit from a society dependent on fossil fuels by wanting to manufacture the greenest battery in the world,” Paolo Cerruti explained to me on Thursday.
The CEO for the North American branch of the Swedish company asked to meet me because he wanted to reaffirm his commitment to making Quebec a development hub for the global energy transition, despite the fact that Northvolt has made the headlines in recent months for its lack of environmental sensitivity.
“The reaction of some environmentalists took us by surprise. We are establishing ourselves in McMasterville on a 170 hectare site which has a heavy industrial history of 120 years and which has been abandoned.
“We paid 5 million for the disappearance of 13 hectares of wetlands and we are committed to restoring 30 to 50 hectares of land in the region to compensate for the felling of trees on the site. We followed all government directives,” said the CEO.
Paolo Cerruti rejects out of hand the argument that Quebec has modified its regulations so that the Northvolt project escapes a BAPE study.
“This regulation was modified before our very first exchanges with Quebec. We had nothing to do with it. We have a project in which three major issues converge: climate change, land use planning and State intervention in the development of a new industrial sector. That’s a lot and people need to sort it all out,” assesses the CEO.
Does he regret having chosen Quebec to set up his factory which could have been set up in the American states of New York or Michigan?
“We regret the distractions, but not being in Quebec which is a shareholder of Northvolt and which, like us, has every interest in the project succeeding. Zero carbon emission energy from Quebec will allow us to have a battery with three times less carbon intensity than Asian batteries and which will become ten times less carbon intensive in 2030,” anticipates Paolo Cerruti.
The urgency to act
Nevertheless, several observers question the urgency that Northvolt invokes to move forward with its project as if there was pressure on time.
“There is indeed an urgency to act because there is a market coincidence that must be respected. Our large American seed customer – who we cannot name so as not to jeopardize its supplies – wants us to enter production in 2027 and for that we must start manufacturing cells from the summer of 2026,” explains Paolo Cerruti.
PHOTO PATRICK SANFAÇON, LA PRESSE ARCHIVES
Land for the future Northvolt factory, in Montérégie
If Northvolt misses this window of opportunity, the company risks leaving the market to Asian manufacturers who invented lithium-ion batteries around 30 years ago for the consumer electronics market. First created by the Japanese, before being taken over by the Koreans and the Chinese.
Did Northvolt undergo the same kind of pressure when it set up in Sweden or more recently in Germany?
” No not at all. We were treated to ovations when we announced our establishment in Skellefteå, in the north of Sweden, just as we were very well received in Hamburg, in Germany,” emphasizes the CEO.
How is it that Northvolt agreed to build a battery cell factory in Germany with a financial participation from the German state of only 1.3 billion compared to more than 2.7 billion in Quebec?
In Quebec, a cathode materials factory, a battery cell factory and a recycling plant are being built. In Germany, it is only a battery cell factory. The cathodes will be manufactured in Sweden.
Paolo Cerruti, CEO of Northvolt North America
A Swedish financial newspaper reported Thursday The Montreal Journalsuggests that Northvolt suffered a loss of 1.4 billion during the first nine months of 2023, is the company threatened?
“We are gaining momentum. Our Skellefteå factory started manufacturing battery cells in 2023, we will invest further in our factories. If we were in danger, we would not have raised US5 billion two weeks ago and US1.5 billion a few months ago.
“Tesla took 13 years before delivering its first profits. It is necessary to relativize. In Quebec, we plan to manufacture our first battery cells in the summer of 2026 to become fully operational in the summer of 2027,” points out the CEO who has just bought a house in Montreal where he moved with his wife, leaving her three adult children in Europe.
Last week, Northvolt organized three days of meetings with major Quebec and Canadian construction companies to get to know them better with a view to future calls for tenders.
The company has 65 employees and should end the year with 250 people mainly in project management because Northvolt will remain the prime contractor for the McMasterville and Saint-Basile-le-Grand site.