Recently, things have been anything but smooth for the Swedish battery cell manufacturer Northvolt. The group under co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson (53) lost one BMW-Contract worth 2 billion euros; manager magazine reported exclusively about it. The reasoning was serious: the quality of the cells was not yet stable enough and the delivery date had moved too far back, BMW said.
Northvolt is far behind the stated targets: The company originally wanted to achieve a total production capacity of 16 gigawatt hours by 2023, enough for more than 250,000 electric cars. But Carlsson hasn’t come anywhere near that far. Now he is restructuring the management.
Pia Aaltonen-Forsell replaces CFO Alexander Hartman. He is set to take on the role of Chief Transformation Officer to lead the company’s recently announced strategic review, Northvolt announced on Tuesday
. At the same time, Matthias Arleth will become a member of the executive management team as President Cells. The German will focus on implementing Northvolt’s growth strategy, starting with the first Gigafactory in Skellefteå, Sweden. At the same time, he will take responsibility for research and development as well as the production of battery cells, Northvolt said. Aaltonen-Forsell and Arleth are scheduled to take up their new positions in August.
“Great talent with first-class experience”
Aaltonen-Forsell has been CFO of steel producer Outokumpu since 2019. Matthias Arleth previously worked for more than 25 years in management positions at various global companies in the automotive industry, including Volkswagen, Magna and Webasto. He ended an episode as head of the Stuttgart supplier Mahle in 2022 after just four months.
Carlsson and board chairman Tom Johnstone spoke of “great talent” with “first-class experience” that they had brought to Northvolt from global companies.
Northvolt was founded in Stockholm in 2016 and is considered a pioneer of a sustainable model in battery manufacturing. According to its own information, the company has so far received orders worth more than 50 billion US dollars. Customers include Scania, Volvo Cars, Audi and Porsche. Northvolt currently supplies batteries from its Gigafactory in Skellefteå and from its development and industrialization campus Northvolt Labs in Västerås.
But insiders are not satisfied with the quality of the cells and the output of the Gigafactory in Skellefteå. “If Skellefteå doesn’t finally deliver stable functioning battery cells, then they won’t get any orders at all,” a supervisory board member involved warned manager magazin. Northvolt also needs fresh money to be able to continue. The ramp-up in Skellefteå and the construction of the planned additional factories in Gothenburg, in the Schleswig-Holstein Heath and in Canada consumes billions. Insiders put the capital requirement for the next three to five years alone at 5 billion euros.
However, according to information from manager magazin, a large part of the sales calculated for 2024 and especially for 2025 are likely to be canceled in view of the delays – at least as long as restructuring board Hartman and the new battery cell boss Arleth do not ensure improvement.