The Nordic market might only have a population of some 27 million people, but the battery value chain there is well represented – from mining of raw materials to manufacture, recycling and research. Andrew Draper reports.
According to a report from Nordic business agencies Innovation Norway, Business Finland, Business Sweden, and the Swedish Energy Agency – the Nordic Battery Value Chain – the emerging battery industry in Sweden, Finland, and Norway builds on traditional Nordic strongholds such as automotive, maritime, chemicals, manufacturing and mining.
Global rankings
BloombergNEF has placed Finland, Norway and Sweden fifth and joint seventh respectively in the global ranking for the lithium-ion battery supply chain. Announced in February, this was thanks to strong ESG performance and advanced recycling systems, it said.
It considers 46 individual metrics to track the supply chain potential. It uses five equally weighted categories: raw materials, battery manufacturing, downstream demand, ESG considerations, and ‘industry, infrastructure and innovation’. It then assigns a rank per category, which are combined to give an overall ranking.
Rich critical mineral deposits
Recycled lead barsThe region has rich deposits of critical minerals including cobalt, graphite and lithium. Its political stability is attractive to international investors. Mining activities sometimes result in clashes with environmental protestors, as Australian mining company Talga has found. Its Luleå anode refinery, claimed to be the first of its kind in Europe, plans to manufacture sustainable anode material for lithium-ion batteries.
Situated within the Luleå Industrial Park in northern Sweden, the refinery uses high grade natural graphite from Talga’s own deposits near Vittangi. In its initial stage, the refinery would produce 19,500 tonnes of anode material per year, some 16GWh of battery capacity.
The Swedish Land and Environment Court ruled in September that Talga could proceed with mining in Vittangi, rejecting the protests of environmentalists and indigenous Sami people.
At Norge Mining, CEO John Vergopoulos, said the company introduced downstream activities for the first time in 2023. It is conducting a feasibility study and has deposits of phosphate, vanadium and titanium. He said the priority in 2023 was phosphorus, including purified wet phosphoric acid for LFP batteries. “Downstream production of these would increase the value of the minerals we have,” he said in his company’s annual report. The company claims its phosphate has the highest purity in the world, at 98%.
Other ongoing exploration and planned mine openings include a million tonnes of rare earth materials discovered by Swedish mining company LKAB in Kiruna, Sweden, the largest of its kind in Europe. Keliber has a lithium mine and hydroxide refinery on the cards in Kokkola, Finland. Production of 15,000 tonnes per year of battery-grade lithium hydroxide is due to start in 2025.
Large industrial players
The Nordic region has a number of large industrial players who have moved into electrification, such as Volvo Cars, Volvo Trucks and Volvo Penta (power solutions and energy storage), plus truck maker Scania. Volvo Cars and Northvolt have a cell production JV in Gothenburg, and are investing $2.9 billion.
Boliden is a Swedish company with five mines, five smelters and around 6,000 employees. It extracts and produces copper, zinc, nickel and lead.
Group communications director Klas Nilsson told BEST the big challenges are the decision to rebuild the tank house at its copper smelter in Rönnskär, northern Sweden, and the launch of low-carbon nickel for the battery industry.
He said the planned investment in the new tank house is Skr4.8 billion ($770 million). The plant expansion would mean the production of copper cathodes and precious metals will gradually increase to full capacity during the second half of 2026.
The investment will be partially financed by a potential insurance payout up to Skr3.4 billion. This followed a devastating fire at the plant last June. Investment is due to begin in 2024 and the plant will have a capacity of 230,000 tonnes. This is in line with the previous capacity and granted under the existing environmental permit.
In a capital market update in March, the company announced the launch of a low-carbon nickel product. It is mined in Kevitsa in northern Finland and refined at the Harjavalta smelter, the only nickel smelter in western Europe. Boliden claims it can produce nickel with 5kg CO2e/kg nickel, less than the global average of 34kg.
Harjavalta anode castingSeven gigafactories
Seven gigafactories have been announced in the Nordic region from Northvolt, Morrow, Freyr, Elinor and Beyonder. Northvolt is the furthest ahead, with cells now being produced at a small, but growing, scale from Northvolt Ett in northern Sweden. All other facilities are in early stages including construction, being on hold or still in pre-construction.
In December, Enerpoly, Swedish maker of zinc-ion batteries, received an $8.4 million grant from the Swedish Energy Agency to build what it claimed is “the world’s first megafactory to manufacture zinc-ion batteries”. The plant will be built in Sweden in the next three years. Annual capacity will be 100MWh.
Vianode, Norwegian supplier of anode graphite solutions, was awarded a €30 million ($32 million) grant earlier this year from Innovation Norway under the Important Project of Common European Interest (IPCEI) European Battery Innovation (EuBatIn) programme to support the development of the Herøya customer qualification plant. Its long-term ambition is to supply advanced battery materials to three million EVs per year by 2030.
Emerging energy storage
Iola Hughes, head of research at market analysts Rho Motion said energy storage in the Nordics has been relatively slow to get started, compared to the UK for example. “This is largely due to the high amount of hydropower in the region,” she said.
Varnamo batteripark“However, as more renewables are added, more capacity for Nordic reserve markets is needed and BESS are set to take an important role here complementing the existing solutions. This is in addition to the increasingly attractive revenues seen in the Nordics as the energy market becomes more volatile (fast pace of renewable roll-out in coming years). Sweden is leading the way, with 500MWh of BESS planned to enter operation in 2024.”
In February, French renewable energy producer Neoen announced the start of construction work on the Nordics’ largest battery unit – Isbillen Power Reserve – in Sollefteå, northern Sweden. The 93.9MW/93.9MWh lithium-ion ESS will be connected to E’ON’s 130kV grid.
Grid balancing is a growing business in Sweden and in the Nordic region. The main reason is the growing share of intermittent renewable energy from wind turbines and PV panels. The new battery unit will stabilise the 50Hz grid frequency in partnership with Svenska Kraftnät, Sweden’s national grid operator.
In the same month, energy storage companies Ingrid Capacity and BW ESS said they were starting the construction of BESS at eight locations in Sweden.
An output of more than 200MW is now in construction in Falköping (16MW), Karlskrona (16MW/16MWh), Katrineholm (20MW/20MWh), Mjölby (8MW/8MWh), Sandviken (20MW/20MWh), Vaggeryd (11MW/11MWh), Värnamo (20MW/20MWh) and Västerås (11MW/11MWh).
Vaggeryd batteriparkLast September, Ingrid Capacity and BW ESS announced the start of six projects that will contribute to a total output of 89MW.
Erik Strømsø, CEO of BW ESS, said at the time this second collaboration with Ingrid Capacity represented “a substantial expansion of its energy storage asset base in Sweden”.
Finland’s Wärtsilä Energy Storage & Optimisation provides grid-scale, hybrid and island microgrid solutions. It combines software and storage hardware in its offerings. In February, it announced a 300MW/600MWh ESS for battery storage specialist Zenobe in Kilmarnock, Scotland. It is its second project for Zenobe.
In March, it launched Quantum2, a fully integrated high-capacity BESS designed for global large-scale deployment.
Strong recycling
Rho Motion’s battery recycling lead, Mina Ha, told BEST that battery recycling pre-treatment capacity in the Nordic region currently accounts for nearly a quarter of Europe’s capacity. It is mainly led by Norway and Sweden, she added. “The two countries are expected to maintain their pivotal roles in being capable of processing the large volumes of scrap. Black mass refining in Europe, currently undersupplied, is expected to improve with the commissioning of Northvolt’s Revolt Ett plant in Sweden and the expansion of Fortum’s hydro plant in Finland.”
Bergsöe recycling car batteriesNorway’s Hydrovolt and Finnish Fortum announced a tie-up in February, with the latter taking black mass from the former for hydrometallurgical processing at its plant in Hjaravalta, Finland.
Tero Holländer, Head of Fortum’s Battery Recycling division, said the agreement is the first commercial one for black mass offtake between the two companies in “an emerging market with large potential”.
Morrow Batteries and Stena Recycling entered into an agreement in February on processing battery production scrap from the Morrow cell factory in Arendal, Norway. The scrap will be handled at Stena Recycling’s new battery recycling plant in Halmstad, Sweden.
Morrow is due to start trial battery production in 2024, and Stena will take the production scrap for the ensuing 18 months. Stena’s Marcus Martinsson told us European and Nordic battery recycling are emerging, alongside Nordic cell production.
“In addition to this, the early high levels of EV penetration in the Nordic region have sparked the beginning of a growing end-of-life battery waste stream,” he said. This market segment is a crucial area for Stena Recycling.
Bergsöe recycled lead bar productionNational battery strategies
Sweden, Finland and Norway have all published national battery strategies. In May 2022 the three governments entered bilateral agreements for, among others, the battery value chain. But Denmark remains a missing piece of the jigsaw. Anne Marie Damgaard, director of the Danish Centre for Energy Storage, and Peter Høirup Nielsen of Schneider Electric, said in a debate article the government should stop its obsession with Power-to-X and consider battery technology too. It has been notable by its absence, they said.
