There are now five international interested parties. According to Kubu he believes that all businesses are such that would pass a security screening if it came to a potential purchase.
– I’m a lot more hopeful today than I was three weeks ago, says Mikael Kubu.
Have you had another serious offer?
– When you sell larger operations you work with indicative bids, then binding bids and there may be some additional terms and conditions. I can say that we are in relatively extensive negotiations with several parties. Several parties intend to put in a bid. The parties are also aware of what the minimum price level is.
What is the price tag of the factory?
– What I can say is that it is a very small amount of money in relation to the investment made in the factory. In this case all buyers are interested in taking over the entire operations. The alternative is to dismantle the factory and sell it, which would probably lead to a very small net gain for the bankruptcy estate in the end.
The factory has been wound up in June and is now in a maintenance phase where the machines are maintained and hazardous working material is being dealt with. There is now a race against the clock to be able to re-employ the talent that has just been made redundant from Northvolt.
– The difficulty is that it has to move fast, otherwise we will only have machines to sell and the buyer is of course also interested in the staff, says Kubu.
Are we talking weeks or months before a deal is made?
– I’m tremendously more hopeful today, then you never know - it’s a big commitment to take over the factory, Mikael Kubu concludes.