Northvolt chooses Quebec for its next battery gigafactory – a giant $5 billion project

Northvolt has announced that it has selected a location in Quebec, on the south shore of Montreal, to build a new $5 billion battery gigafactory.

Northvolt is a battery startup founded by two former Tesla executives who worked on Tesla’s first Gigafactory in Nevada with Panasonic.

The company planned to recreate the “gigafactory” concept of having a giant battery factory producing in the “gigawatt-hour” level of battery cells for electric cars.

It already has a couple of factories in Europe at different stages, including one still ramping up production in Sweden and one in construction in Germany.

Today, Northvolt announced that it is making a move to North America:

Northvolt today announced that it will establish a fully integrated lithium-ion battery gigafactory, just outside of Montréal, in the Canadian province of Quebec. The factory, named Northvolt Six, will host 60 GWh of annual cell manufacturing capacity, with adjacent facilities for cathode active material production and battery recycling, enabling fully circular production at site.

Northvolt has selected a site between Mcmasterville and Saint-Basile-le-Grand, which is actually the town where I grew up in the suburbs of Montreal.

The company plans to start construction of the first phase by the end of the year and be in production by 2026. The first phase will have a 30 GWh capacity.

Peter Carlsson, CEO and cofounder of Northvolt, commented on the announcement:

In the seven years since Northvolt was founded, we have pursued a singular goal — to establish a new, sustainable model for battery manufacturing. Today, we are expanding our ambitions by bringing Northvolt to Canada.

The company is particularly happy with the fact that its batteries will be produced with 100% renewable and cheap hydro electricity.

Northvolt Co-Founder Paolo Cerruti will lead the project as CEO of Northvolt North America and will set up offices in Montreal. He commented:

We have in Northvolt Six enormous potential, not only to rapidly expand our ability to bring sustainable batteries into markets of North America, but to accelerate Quebec’s emergence as a key actor in the global energy transition. With its unique access to renewable power and raw materials, we see this as the ideal base of operations for Northvolt’s first gigafactory outside of Europe. We look forward to engagement with all local stakeholders and the province, to make Northvolt Six a textbook example of sustainable investment.

Quebec has recently seen billions of dollars in investment in the battery supply chain, but those investments were for material transformation for battery components.

This is the first time the province has secured a major project that puts everything together to produce battery cells.

Northvolt is rumored to have secured as much as $3 billion CAD in government incentives at the federal and provincial levels for the project.

Update: The government support for this project is actually crazier than anticipated, with the Quebec government contributing $2.9 billion and the federal government contributing $4.4 billion.