A huge Swedish battery factory for electric cars is shutting down, because it has opened at all, because Texel Energy stops a gigantic investment.
Texel Energy's battery factory in Malmo is closing because it has even been built. The planned investment, which promised up to 6,000 jobs, has been dropped due to a lack of funding, and especially no help from the state.
In 2021, Gothenburg-based Texel Energy announced plans for a battery factory in Malmo. The company had developed a new type of battery that was cheaper to produce than traditional lithium batteries and had a longer lifespan.
The technical committee of Malmo city council reserved a 50,000 square meter plot for the factory, which Texel Energy hoped would create 2,000 jobs initially and eventually up to 6,000.
But the plans never came to fruition. In October last year, the deadline for pre-emption rights to the land expired and the project itself was buried.
– The company is still in a development phase, and my view of the whole thing is that you have not been sufficiently prepared to run such a large establishment within the given time frame for the basic option," says Malmo's business director, Micael Nord, to Sydsvenskan .
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Texel's managing director, Lars Jacobsson, points to a lack of government support as the main reason why the factory will not come to fruition.
- – We have always said that we need some form of government investment support to be able to carry out such a large factory project, says Lars Jacobsson, Texel Energy's managing director, to Sydsvenskan.
He criticizes the Swedish state's massive investment in Northvolt, which produces lithium batteries, and believes that it has taken the focus away from other technologies.
Texel Energy will now instead build the factory in the USA, where the company has a subsidiary and has collaborated with both the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Industry in Australia on the development of the battery technology.
What will happen to the land in Malmo is yet to be seen.
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