A massive Swedish battery factory for electric cars is shutting down before even breaking ground, as Texel Energy has decided to withdraw its major investment.
Texel Energy’s planned battery factory in Malmö, which had promised up to 6,000 jobs, has been scrapped due to a lack of funding—especially without support from the Swedish government.
In 2021, Gothenburg-based Texel Energy announced plans to build a battery factory in Malmö, introducing a new battery technology that would be cheaper to produce and have a longer lifespan than traditional lithium batteries.
Malmö’s city council even set aside a 50,000-square-meter plot for the factory, which Texel Energy hoped would initially create 2,000 jobs, eventually rising to 6,000.
But the project never made it past the planning stages.
In October last year, the deadline for the pre-emption rights on the plot expired, effectively putting an end to the project.
“The company is still in a development phase, and from my perspective, they weren’t adequately prepared to establish such a large operation within the allotted time frame,” says Malmö’s business director, Micael Nord, to Sydsvenskan.
Texel’s managing director, Lars Jacobsson, attributes the failure primarily to the lack of government support.
“We’ve always stated that we would need some form of government investment support to complete a factory of this scale,” Jacobsson told Sydsvenskan.
He criticized the Swedish government’s heavy investment in Northvolt, a lithium battery producer, saying that it has diverted attention away from other technologies.
Texel Energy now plans to build the factory in the USA, where they have a subsidiary and partnerships with both the U.S. Department of Energy and the Australian Department of Industry to develop the battery technology.
As for the future of the land in Malmö, it remains uncertain.
