Peter Carlsson, MD of the Northvolt group runs the nine kilometres between Stadsparken and Northvolt Ett in a running race in connection with the factory being opened.
It is September 2022. Voices echo across the vast outdoor space in Borlänge, chanting something over and over in unison. Tents and sleeping bags are scattered everywhere, alongside stages, dance floors, gaming areas – and plenty of alcohol. It looks more like a music festival than a corporate event, staff would later reflect. It's a party, and more than 2,000 employees have gathered for "Voltchella" – presumably an electrified take on California's Coachella festival.
It's five o'clock in the afternoon and Peter Carlsson is standing on stage. Dressed casually in black, he stretches out his long arms. The festival is about to begin and he's delivering the opening address. The crowd listens intently, looking happy and expectant. Peter Carlsson divides the audience into two sections, positioning them on either side of a thick yellow line.
– The left side screams 'focus', the right responds 'close', OK?"
He raises his arms again, then points left. The audience responds. Then right – the same again.
– Focus, close, focus, close, focus, close... People actually did it – they stood there screaming like we were some kind of cult. It was insane, Jessica recalls.
Jessica, who had been recruited relatively recently to the Stockholm head office, found the situation bizarre compared to her previous work environments. In the corporate culture she knew, you didn't mix work with personal life, and she felt she didn't quite fit the social expectations at Northvolt. There were constant kick-offs, after-work drinks, and colleagues who liked to hang out together in their free time.
The line between work and spare time blurred for many. But she understands why.
– People came from all over the world and moved their lives here. Many had no one to hang out with, so it became natural for many to find friends at work, she says.
Peter Carlsson, the company's founder and MD until November 2024, remembers the scene Jessica describes. During that time, he says, they were working hard to manage all the different cultures and expectations of how an organisation should function. They aimed to create a "Northvolt culture" with a flat structure and a strong focus on individual responsibility.
– What I was talking about then was the purpose of what we are doing, that we are building a critical industry for the green transition. It’s important to remember, especially when it feels really bloody difficult. And not to try to solve ten problems at the same time. Solve the problem ahead of you, close it and move on to the next.
Jessica explains that she didn't participate much in the social events outside work; she had brought her family to Sweden and didn't have the same need for that kind of socialisation. Plus, there was always a lot to do at work, and the days were long.
She traveled frequently for work, staying in hotels and driving rental cars, but it seemed there was no clear budget or travel policy. If you wanted to drive a Mercedes-Benz E-Class, even if it was the most expensive option, that was acceptable. Staying at a Marriott instead of a mid-range hotel was also fine.
Jessica wasn't accustomed to work trips that seemed almost devoid of actual work, where the primary purpose appeared to be socialising or simply "showing face." Relationships seemed paramount at this company, she observed, at least for internal connections.
When it came to customer relationships, however, it was a different story, at least sometimes. The pressure in production was immense, and there were so many issues that timely delivery wasn't always possible. She recalls a time when they were significantly behind schedule and knew they couldn't deliver.
– We already knew this on the Thursday, and the delivery was scheduled for Tuesday. But at the meeting with the customer that same day, the manager said that everything is going according to plan. Then we had to call them the day prior to delivery and make up an excuse. But the customer didn’t believe us. ”There's not a chance you didn’t know this last week”, they said. After that, we had to report to them every other day instead of once a week.
Peter Carlsson at the office in Stockholm.
As we've mentioned earlier, Peter Carlsson was facing other issues with customers at this time. Production in Skellefteå was slow, and the major car manufacturers wanted to send their own teams to the factory to evaluate progress. This diverted time from production upscaling. Simultaneously, some customers were also partners, making it even harder to decline their demands.
– The problem was to say 'no' to them when we were delayed, which meant that they obviously put more and more pressure on us. It became an additional complexity to manage the teams in Skellefteå at the same time as installation and ramping up was ongoing, he says.
Jessica has since left Northvolt. She acknowledges that much of the work at the company was enjoyable, especially being part of something new for the future.
However, she felt it was disorganised, and at times, it seemed more about maintaining appearances and claiming everything was fine than actually making things function. The constant time pressure, she says, led to negligence. When she raised concerns with her bosses, she felt dismissed.
– Don’t focus on the problems, they said. We’ll fix that later, don’t be so fixated on details.
– But the devil is in the details, and if you do not solve it now, you will have problems later, she says.
Nevertheless, on the whole, it was a fun job, Jessica reflects. Meaningful, for as long as it lasted.
– We were part of something bigger, that’s how everyone thought about it. We thought that we would contribute to a better world and I felt that it was the first time I would get to use my skills to make a real difference.
The failed muffin bake
It was time to bring Upstream in Northvolt Ett into operation - the section of the factory intended to produce cathode materials for the batteries. Mikael Stenmark, with many years in the industry and six bankruptcies under his belt, had never experienced a workplace quite like Northvolt Ett.
He eventually became the senior safety representative, making public statements when work environment problems came to light. But in the spring of 2022, he had just started working in logistics, specifically with materials handling in Downstream, where the batteries are assembled.
He had also been elected as a regular safety representative. Suddenly, there was frantic activity across the factory area; sections were rapidly built and brought online, and many people were hired in a short span of time.
– When I started in February, there were lots of people who had nothing else to do than to read documentation and work descriptions to get up to speed. There was not a lot of production, but in April, it started to swing into action properly.
Mikael Stenmark worked at Northvolt and later became the senior safety representative. In that roll he had contact with many different parts of the factory regarding work environment issues.
Rumours suggest that Northvolt is eager to bring Upstream into operation and begin manufacturing cathode materials as early as summer. There is considerable scepticism among Mikael's colleagues. Many questions remain about the potential dangers, and no one yet understands how it will function properly, he explains. What is certain is that they will be handling toxic materials to and from the Upstream building.
– They hadn't thought through the entire material flow chain from Upstream to Downstream. I confronted two managers and asked how they planned to transport materials. But no one makes decisions – everything just gets bogged down.
It also becomes clear that parts of Upstream have been designed in a way that creates dangerously high temperatures, Stenmark says.
At worst, temperatures reached between 45 and 48 degrees Celsius in the upper areas near the ceiling. On the floor level, it was around 34 degrees. Additionally, Upstream is so "dirty" - so full of airborne particles when operational - that it's impossible to open doors without contaminating the external environment, and there are no airlocks in the building.
– This is where Upstream's logistical chaos begins. The area has to be manually cleaned with compressed air. Makeshift airlocks are constructed. Dust and particles in a facility will settle somewhere, and when you transport materials back and forth, they eventually settle on other materials and contaminate them too. We were battling that problem right up until we went bankrupt.
The exterior of the Upstream building.
Things weren't made easier by the lack of a clear organisational structure at this time, Stenmark explains.
– It was completely impossible to find out who was responsible for an issue. More clarity regarding who was responsible for what was found as late as 2024. The manager had a fancy title, but it was difficult to see the connection between the title and the work tasks.
Peter Carlsson, the CEO at the time, notes that organisations differ depending on whether production is fully operational or if they're in a project phase.
– There was always both a hierarchical organisation and project organisations, and it may, particularly when you are recruiting lots of people, feel unstructured in such a setup, he says.
Eventually, production did get up and running, but successfully making cathode materials in Skellefteå would prove significantly more difficult than the company had estimated.
Inside Upstream on a completely normal night in 2023, "Johan" is working. He has worked here for almost a year and most shifts follow the same pattern; a problem will turn up somewhere. He sighs to himself. Upstream was started over a year ago but so far they haven't managed to make it work. In Johan's department they get impurities in the material all the time, which means that it cannot be used but instead must be sent off as waste. No one knows for certain why.
– The problem arises somewhere along the line. Whether it's coming from the machine, a pipe or valve or whatever it is. But no one can be bothered to go back through the production and find out where the problem stems from, so instead we keep going, and the same fault occurs all the time, he says.
Johan worked in the processing industry for many years before he started at Northvolt, so he is used to structure and clarity. Here it feels like they are mostly putting out fires. He is thinking about quitting. It is impossible to work this way, he feels. It is too frustrating.
He gazes over to another part of the premises, where the team that sends material to his department works. It is not easier for them. Over there they are working with a facility that is undersized and that, on top of that, keeps breaking down. They cannot keep up with the speed of the production and never manage to achieve more than twenty per cent of the capacity.
– If you are baking muffins and the result is bad you have to change something, either the recipe or how you are baking them. But that's not what they do here, here we just keep going, Johan says.
He emails his boss about the need for them to get to the bottom of where the impurities are coming from. First one email, then another one – and finally one directly to Peter Carlsson.
But he receives no answer to his questions about why they should keep feeding a sinkhole with expensive material bought with borrowed money instead of trying to find the faults and do something about them. He thinks that large amounts of money are disappearing.
– I said once that perhaps we should take the good, super-expensive material and just drive straight over to Stena [waste management] instead because that would have been easier.
Oscar, an engineer, works in another section of Upstream. Like Johan, he's also been there a year but is contemplating resigning. It's clear to him that the process needs to be changed, or at least significantly altered, if it's ever to work, but no one is listening. Sometimes, he regrets coming to Sweden.
– But it was an old dream for me to work with something that makes a difference, so I came here, excited and full of passion, he says.
Once in the factory, he was surprised by how young everyone was. Many, he notes, had Northvolt as their first job after university. That's not inherently wrong, but it can make troubleshooting difficult for those with no industry experience. At his previous workplaces, management would pair rookies with experienced personnel to spread knowledge. Here, the managers were barely visible on the floor.
– I heard how some operators called the supervisors 'PowerPoint engineers' because they walked around with their computers and talked about the problems instead of solving them, he says.
They constantly battled powder leaks, faulty recipes, and clogged pipes. Looking back, Oscar reflects that Upstream never managed to move past initial start-up into full production during his entire tenure. That wouldn't have been the case if the design had worked, he insists.
– If I was top management, I’d say that everything takes too long. But the experienced people had quit, and the supervisors didn't know anything. At the same time, there was a lot of money and the management was forgiving. It was like a university lab where everyone can fail a countless number of times without any consequences, he says.
Oscar eventually resigned. He had grown tired of banging his head against the wall, trying to make managers understand that things had to change if any cathode materials were ever to emerge from Upstream. He even contacted Carlsson, but that led nowhere either. Oscar's perception is that top management had no idea what the reality on the factory floor was truly like.
– It’s like they were living in some kind of bloody Barbie Wonderland where everything was shiny and lovely. They said ”we’re so close” all the time but all they did was to push the timeframe forward.
Peter Carlsson visiting Northvolt Ett in December 2022.
Peter Carlsson saysthat he regularly visits the production floor to form his own perceptions. He usually goes with the production management or the leaders of the processing engineers.
– I have to trust management, but I also want to get a sense of what works and what doesn’t on the factory floor.
He cannot say for certain whether all information reached him. "In some parts, in others perhaps not," as he puts it. But he still feels he had a fairly good understanding of what wasn't working. This included significant problems with process bottlenecks that took a long time to resolve, and also that the problem-solving itself wasn't optimal.
– It was about how Västerås and Skellefteå collaborated in order to problem-solve together. I was worried because I didn’t think that it was properly melded together.
At our office, we've received information stating that Upstream only managed to produce one batch of cathode material in the summer of 2024. Now, new information is emerging from inside the factory. In total, it is said there were only two or three batches that could be used for batteries. For the other cells, imported cathode material was used.
The employees' view that Upstream wasn't working is not shared by Carlsson.
– It's not true, he says.
He explains that they ran tests where production operated continuously for both one and two months, and it worked then. The material produced was used for cells, but the cells required validation for a longer period than Northvolt had estimated, and finances were very strained. Ultimately, the situation became untenable.
– It was the lead times for the validation that had us make the decision to decrease the activities in Upstream and instead solve the cell production. But saying that we have not produced cathode material in Upstream is not true.
If Upstream was one leg of "the world's greenest battery," then Revolt was the other. This is the facility where old battery material was to be revived into near-virgin material for new batteries. This is where Kim was working in 2023, an experienced specialist engineer with very extensive experience in this specific type of industry work.
He was drawn in by the promises of a flat hierarchy and exciting challenges within an industry boasting immense future prospects. Yet, it didn't unfold as he had imagined. As he sees it, there's a huge disparity between Northvolt's ambitions and the actual design they're working with.
In their marketing, Northvolt claims that half of the cathode material in Upstream will come from recycled batteries by 2030. Kim lets out a small laugh.
– They say they’re recycling more than 90 per cent of the material from the batteries, but that's ridiculous. 65 to 70 per cent is the average globally, and that's reasonable.
Just like in Upstream, Revolt produces unclean material, and the design Northvolt has chosen is expensive, inefficient, and dangerous, Kim explains. He's surprised by Northvolt's design choice for Revolt, particularly their use of old methods that, according to him, have largely been abandoned by the industry.
He explains that in one part of the process, copper is meant to be recycled from the 'black mass'—the finely ground dead batteries. However, iron contaminates the copper, making it impure. This method is useless and old-fashioned, according to Kim. Then there are the safety risks. The process worked in the Västerås facility, but there are no guarantees it will work in Revolt, Kim explains.
– In an industrial scale, this process can become dangerous and cause fires and explosions. When you scale up a process, there are many things that can go wrong.
He feels that management has a lack of relevant industrial experience and knowledge about upscaling.
Kim began speaking openly about the problems and proposing changes, first to his manager, then to his manager's manager. But according to him, he received no response.
He then turned to the company's whistle-blowing function. After all, he explains, it wasn't just about extracting material as purely as possible at a reasonable cost, but also about the safety risks on the premises, which he now considers to be unreasonably high.
Sounding the alarm had no effect. Then he was fired. He was told it was because he didn't "fit in." Before leaving, he emailed Peter Carlsson, but still doesn't know if the email was ever read.
Emma Nehrenheim, head of Revolt and of environmental matters at Northvolt.
Emma Nehrenheim, the head of Revolt, sent her responses to our questions via email.
She claims they successfully got the recycling process to work at both Labs and the Revolt factory in Skellefteå. According to her, they achieved a product that met the requirements for battery quality and matched the quality of virgin battery materials. This material was supposedly produced at Revolt Ett. She stated that over 150 tonnes of nickel, cobalt, and manganese sulphates, along with 10 tonnes of lithium hydroxide, were delivered. She clarifies this is an intermediary product that requires further processing before it can be used in batteries.
Norran has asked when the process worked flawlessly in Revolt Ett, but we have not received a response. Nor have we received clear answers on whether they genuinely managed to recycle 90 per cent of the material, only that they reached the expected level of recycling.
Despite this, Nehrenheim calls the Revolt processes groundbreaking and asserts that they achieved some of the best performance measurements in the industry.
– It has low chemical use, a very high degree of recycling and significantly fewer by-products compared to classic recycling methods, she says.
She does admit, however, that they encountered certain mixing problems in the tanks, which the engineers managed to fix.
Nehrenheim states that Northvolt handled complaints and whistleblowing no differently than other companies.
– Managers get information that regards their respective teams, they are then expected to report back on what actions they have taken, she writes.
According to her, the facility was designed and evaluated carefully several times, both internally and by external experts, to assess the risk of explosion.
– All necessary safety measures and considerations were considered during the design and operation, she writes.
During the period when Johan, Oscar, and Kim were focused on battling problematic processes and machines, Northvolt continued its expansion, with new buildings appearing across the factory site.
At the same time, it had been a long while since they had received any new funding, and the efforts to get production running were proving costly. In Upstream, they had to keep buying in complete cathode material from China just to have anything at all to deliver to Downstream, where the batteries are assembled.
Reports about events and incidents began pouring into the Work Environment Authority, but so far, no one was speaking openly about work environment problems in the media. That changed in November 2023. What apparently couldn't happen, happened.
One late evening on the fourth of November, a young man entered the Downstream building. He was 25 years old and had moved to Sweden from Greece to work at Northvolt. This particular evening, he had taken an extra shift and was about to clean filters in a machine that collects material and particles from production. He was wearing protective clothing against chemicals.
What the man didn't know was that it was a risk area. If the wrong equipment or work method was used, an explosion could occur. He should have been wearing different protective clothing that shielded the wearer from fire. But he didn't know this, and neither did anyone else, as it wasn't included in the risk assessment.
– The machine was not correctly labelled. It also had an unfortunate mechanism that ground aluminium down into a powder, and it was aluminium that exploded, says Mikael Stenmark, the senior safety representative at the time.
The tragic explosion on 4 November 2023 may still have consequences for the management of Northvolt.
The man was rushed to hospital with severe burns. On December 15, he died from his injuries. The day before, another fatal accident had occurred in the factory area. Two people working for a subcontractor were crushed by a crane rack while installing weather protection. One lost an arm, the other died instantly.
– We are now gathered in grief. The situation is crushing, and we are now working, hour by hour to help each other through this, Peter Carlsson wrote to the media after the news came out.
However, when journalists went to the factory to speak with staff, they were met by silence. Most people walked past the reporters or stated that the company's policy was not to talk to the media.
In the autumn and winter of 2023, production was meant to be in full swing, but delays kept occurring. Problems mounted. Simultaneously, expansion continued.
This is what the factory area in German Heide looked like in June 2024.
In parallel with all the projects the company has previously started, the plans for the factory Drei in Heide in Germany continues. This is when the plans for another factory is announced, this time in Canada.
Where the factory in Canada was supposed to be it is barely visible that any groundwork has been done in June 2024.
While Northvolt is expanding and the headlines are dominated by the accidents in December 2023, the newspaper Dagens Industri has obtained a secret interim financial report. The article, headlined "Northvolt's secret horrific figures", reveals costs spiralling out of control, barely any income and a cripplingly slow production pace.
But Peter Carlsson has a plan. He describes the company's terrible figures as an "expensive lesson" in an interview with the paper. But he also says that the company does not risk a liquidity crisis in the coming year as the company is "on the verge of signing another financing deal which will be communicated shortly".
It will be a couple of weeks before it reaches the public, but by the end of the year Carlsson knows that Northvolt is about to secure "the biggest green loan so far in Europe". A total of 23 banks and institutions are set to lend the company five billion dollars, almost 50 billion kronor. What he doesn't know is that the money will never be paid out. And that there are those who have started doubting the battery fairytale.
Mikael Stenmark has a lot to say about his time at Northvolt, both positive and negative. He could consider working there again.
By the end of 2023, Mikael Stenmark had worked at Northvolt for almost two years, rising to become the senior safety representative. He held a very different outlook on the future than the optimism Peter Carlsson expressed.
– There was a deadline in the autumn of 2023 when they had to be up and running. When that came and went, you understood: it’s only a matter of time now.
In 2022 and 2023, Northvolt completed the first stage of its Skellefteå factory and began expanding it. The company had ambitious plans for new facilities across both Europe and North America, boasting a 50 billion kronor order book. Yet, major problems persisted.
At the Revolt facility, they were struggling to recycle pure battery materials. They had also failed to produce their own cathode material—meaning they were not delivering on key promises. Employees described malfunctioning machines and processes, and a pervasive sense of chaos on the ground.
The numbers were dire. By the end of the year, just two billion kronor remained to address production issues at the Skellefteå factory—and the situation was about to deteriorate significantly.
Next part: The path towards downfall and catastrophic headlines
Investigation
With the help of around 20 well-informed sources — several of whom requested anonymity due to concerns about future job prospects — and access to extensive documentation, a clearer picture is emerging of what really happened at the Skellefteå factory. We have conducted in-depth interviews with many of these sources and remained in regular contact with them. The information published in this series has been verified by multiple individuals and reveals patterns we have tried to illustrate.
As part of our reporting, we also contacted several former senior managers at Northvolt Ett for comment. Plant manager Fredrik Hedlund declined to participate. Plant manager Mark Duchesne did not respond to our request. We sent questions to Maria Åstrand, head of Upstream, but have not received a reply. Emma Nehrenheim, head of Revolt and environmental affairs, has answered some of our questions, although others remain unanswered.
In many cases, it would have been preferable to hear directly from those who have worked at the heart of the company.