Northvolt, a Swedish battery producer, plans to increase its workforce in Poland to 500 over the next 18 months, the company’s co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson has announced.

Along with employing more people the battery developer and manufacturer, which specialises in lithium-ion technology for electric vehicles, Northvolt will spend USD 200 mln on building a factory in the Polish Baltic coastal city of Gdańsk in 2022. Currently, the company hires 150 people in that city.

Peter Carlsson said that the need to reduce carbon emissions would lead to a focus on renewable energy sources and e-mobility.

He added Northvolt had an order portfolio worth USD 30 bn, and declared that around 30 percent of all orders received would be implemented in Gdańsk.

The factory will be part of a European project for a battery production chain in which cells produced in Sweden will be sent to Gdańsk, where they will be assembled into complete energy storage systems, and then delivered to customers. Used battery modules will be recycled in Sweden.

“We want 50 percent of the materials used for production to come from recycling by the year 2030,” Robert Chryc-Gawrychowski, the CEO of Northvolt Poland said.