Northvolt’s bankruptcy is one of the most extensive in all of Sweden’s industrial history.
The financier and risk capitalist Harald Mix is one of the co-founders of Northvolt. He has had a key role in realising the project financially. Through his private investment company Vargas Holding he has, together with his business partner Carl-Erik Lagercrantz, put around SEK 175 million into the battery company.
But with time criticism targeted at him has increased. Harald Mix, who is also the co-founder of Stegra in Boden, has been accused of building his industrial projects on overly optimistic assumptions. Debaters have questioned what information about the crisis he actually had access to and what he said publicly.
Since the Northvolt bankruptcy he has kept a low profile in the media which has given rise to further criticism.
– Harald Mix is one of the architects behind the project. I think it would be appropriate for him to answer some questions, Skellefteå municipality’s opposition leader Andreas Löwenhöök (M) told Svenska Dagbladet.
Now the co-founder chooses to talk in an interview with the same paper interview with the same paper. He explains his radio silence by stating that he is neither a spokesperson of the company, nor a board member and that it therefore would be incorrect to make a statement in “an incredibly sensitive point in time”.
In the interview Harald Mix says that he has not made a profit off Northvolt and he reacts strongly to those suggesting that the company was started in order for the founders to enrich themselves with taxpayer money.
His own investment in Northvolt was SEK 175 million, of which almost 30 million was injected in autumn 2023 and spring 2024, he tells SvD. This proves that he believed in the company until the very end, he says.
SvD: Have you lost all of your 175 millions in Northvolt?
– Yes, definitely.
He points out that neither him nor Vargas has received any money for helping Northvolt attract capital.
Northvolt’s bankruptcy, the biggest in Sweden in modern times, is something Harald Mix describes as “a perfect storm”.
He highlights the battery manufacturer’s challenges in increasing production, the crisis of the European car industry, political winds that have slowed down the EV development, a financial market that has paused investments and that the principal owner Volkswagen has its own problems.
– When you look in the rear-view mirror we should perhaps have brought in even more expertise from Asian manufacturers right from the start, he says.
“When you look in the rear-view mirror we should perhaps have brought in even more expertise from Asian manufacturers right from the start”, Harald Mix tells SvD.
SvD: But was the project not hopeless from the beginning, Sweden and Europe were far behind China?
– Northvolt was based on a strong business idea, producing the world's greenest battery and building a competitive European battery industry.
He defends Northvolt’s plans for a foreign expansion. The problems in Skellefteå were not due to these plans, he says.
– The Northvolt project has sometimes been portrayed as to big and too fast-moving. My view is rather that the operational competence was not scaled up quickly enough. Northvolt’s expansion plans were necessary in order to secure long-term competitiveness, he tells the paper.
SvD: Have you taken your responsibility in Northvolt?
– It's difficult to exercise power when you’re not on the board.
Harald Mix does not want to point to any individual decision that he regrets when it comes to Northvolt but says that there surely are ”things that could have been done differently”. He describes the bankruptcy as a failure but maintains that the idea behind the project was correct.
Last week Northvolt’s factory in Skellefteå officially closed. Out of the 300 people who worked there after the bankruptcy, only a small group now remains to look after the premises and the equipment.