According to media reports, the Swedish company is expected to close a financing round totaling around $300 million next week. A person familiar with the matter said Bloomberg that the struggling battery cell manufacturer wants to take advantage of this to clean up its finances.

However, it is not yet clear whether the deal will actually be finalized next week: due to the complexity of the deal documentation with customers, investors and lenders, the final steps could still take a some time.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the major group’s investment arm The American bank Goldman Sachs is reportedly considering rescuing troubled battery maker Northvolt along with other investors. And it is precisely this consortium that is probably now involved: as part of the financing of the rescue, new equity funds and new loans are in prospect, reports Bloomberg. Northvolt itself declined to comment to the news agency. The financial injection would give Northvolt time to stabilize its production and establish longer-term financing.

In the meantime, there is good news on the customer side: truck brand Scania, which belongs to Volkswagen’s Traton Group, has announced plans to equip all its future electric vehicles with Northvolt batteries, giving a boost to the manufacturer in difficulty. “We are now moving on. In the future, all of our currently sold battery electric vehicles will be equipped with Northvolt cells,” said Scania CEO Christian Levin.

“We are about to escape our production hell. I think we have the most difficult period behind us,” commented Peter Carlsson, CEO of Northvolt, in an interview. The CEO declined to say when the production rate at Northvolt’s main factory in Skellefteå, near the Arctic Circle, will reach full capacity. The plant is currently operating at only five to ten percent of its total capacity.

Volkswagen, Northvolt’s largest shareholder, has so far said it will support Northvolt in expanding battery cell production. However, Scania CEO Christian Levin declined to give details of any funding, but stressed that Scania would continue to support Northvolt.

“It’s in our best interest to make sure they can continue to deliver cells to us,” Levin said. “We can therefore continue to deliver vehicles to our customers for whom we have a customer contract. »

The situation around Northvolt has reached its climax since summer. At that time it became known that shareholder BMW had canceled an order for battery cells worth billions – apparently because the Swedish company was behind schedule and BMW would no longer need the prismatic cells ordered at a later date.

At early Octoberwe then learned that the Northvolt subsidiary Ett Expansion AB, responsible for the canceled factory expansion, had filed for bankruptcy. This would be the subsidiary in which production for Audi and BMW was grouped. “Audi has therefore also, as confirmed by high-ranking officials of the group and the brand, initially withdrawn its order from Northvolt”, the article specifies.

bnnbloomberg.ca (funding), bnnbloomberg.ca (Scania)