Northvolt opens Europe's first homegrown battery gigafactory

Swedish battery group Northvolt said it has launched its "gigafactory" in northern Sweden, the first of its kind to be undertaken by a European company on the continent.

Intended to compete with US electric car giant Tesla and Asian producers of lithium-ion batteries, the factory in Skelleftea assembled its first battery cell late Tuesday, Northvolt said.

"Marking a new chapter in European industrial history, the cell is the first to have been fully designed, developed and assembled at a gigafactory by a homegrown European battery company," Northvolt said.

Once at full capacity, the site is expected to produce enough batteries to power one million electric vehicles annually, with an annual production capacity of 60 gigawatt hours (GWh), according to the firm.

"Today is a great milestone for Northvolt which the team has worked very hard to achieve," Northvolt chief executive Peter Carlsson said in a company statement.

"Of course, this first cell is only the beginning. Over the course of the coming years, we look forward to Northvolt Ett expanding its production capacity greatly to enable the European transition to clean energy," he said. 

Tesla is due to launch its first factory in Europe shortly and Asian rivals have significant operations in Poland and Hungary -- but no European firm had yet operated a significant facility until now. 

Northvolt, one of Europe's leading battery hopefuls, has already secured $30 billion (26.5 billion euros) worth of orders from European car giants including Germany's BMW and Volkswagen, and Sweden's Volvo, with which it plans a second European factory. 

The new factory, dubbed "Northvolt Ett" (Northvolt One) in Swedish, already employs 500 people and will likely have as many as 3,000 staff once it reaches full capacity.