Knowledge and control“Battery-making was an industry in the...

Knowledge and control

“Battery-making was an industry in the previous decades, but now it’s a business,” Hermansson said at the event in Berlin. Apart from using cheap renewable energies (predominantly hydro power, and to a lesser extent wind energy) to lower manufacturing costs, Northvolt claims that at the core of its business model lies the knowledge and control of all parts of the supply chain.

The supply chain for batteries is long, and often Northvolt’s competitors do not know where they buy their raw materials from, argued Hermansson. This is definitely not the case with Northvolt, claimed Ulmefors, which buys raw materials (nickel, cobalt and lithium) directly from the mines that it also visits, so that the company has a clear idea what it buys and from where. “In the end, we are comfortable how things are sourced, how they are produced and what goes into the batteries we make,” said Ulmefors. Northvolt’s exact mine locations and suppliers remain a company secret.

Except for raw materials and mining, the company controls all other parts of the supply chain in house, said Ulmefors. On this front, Northvolt benefits from its vertically integrated structure and logistics on the European continent. “We believe that being a home-grown European actor we can know our customers, we have logistics within Europe,” Ulmefors said. And while “often supply chains can span across the world and across continents, we want to bring that closer. We have a very ambitious plan for data collection, modeling, traceability, connect everything in the factory … we want to go all the way from the raw materials to cells, to packs and eventually recycling, collecting data along the way to create the best models available.”

https://www.pv-magazine.com/2020/02/29/the-weekend-read-building-europes-battery-business/