Northvolt builds €4.5bn battery gigafactory in Heide, 3,000 jobs

Swedish battery manufacturer Northvolt is building a gigafactory in Heide for battery cells with 3,000 jobs. Annual capacity: 60 GWh. Production start planned for 2026. Update (25 Oct 2026): The project was never built. After the groundbreaking in March 2024, Northvolt filed for Chapter 11 protection in the US in November 2024, followed by insolvency proceedings at its Swedish headquarters; the Heide site remained a developed plot without a factory. Since August 2025 US manufacturer Lyten has intended to take over the site, and in June 2026 it agreed a purchase price of about €60m with KfW, the federal government and Schleswig-Holstein; Lyten plans a much smaller project with about 1,000 instead of 3,000 jobs, plus battery storage and a data centre. Completion of the sale is not confirmed in the sources read. The original figures (3,000 jobs, €4.5bn) are therefore obsolete and no longer count towards the headline figures (electrive, 22 Jun 2026 and 30 Jun 2026).