Tag: compete

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World News

Northvolt raises $2.75 billion from Goldman, VW to compete with Tesla

Northvolt raises $2.75 billion from Goldman, VW to compete with Tesla

Northvolt’s battery factory in northern Sweden in June.

North volt

Northvolt, a Swedish battery maker, has raised $ 2.75 billion from a number of big names to fuel its global expansion and increase production.

Headquartered in Stockholm, the company makes the lithium-ion batteries used to power electric cars, and claims it has signed $ 27 billion in contracts with companies like BMW and VW. The aim is to manufacture “the most environmentally friendly batteries in the world” using renewable energy sources and recycled raw materials.

The latest funding round, Northvolt’s largest to date, was led by Goldman Sachs and VW alongside new investors including Swedish pension funds AP1, AP2, AP3, AP4 and Canadian pension provider OMERS. Previous investors such as Spotify CEO Daniel Ek and the investment company Baillie Gifford are also investing in the round.

The total investment in the company now stands at $ 6.5 billion. The latest round of funding valued Northvolt at $ 11.75 billion, according to a person familiar with the company who asked to remain anonymous as Northvolt did not publicly disclose the number.

Northvolt was founded in 2016 and intends to use the financing to expand the capacity of its plant in the far north of Sweden from 40 gigawatt hours to 60 gigawatt hours, which is enough to supply batteries for around 1 million electric vehicles. Production is scheduled to start at the factory this year.

Read more about electric vehicles from CNBC Pro

Northvolt co-founder and CEO Peter Carlsson told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday that the company is making “fairly significant shipments” from a smaller facility that has been in operation for over a year to customers who are now doing their own business. Validations. “

While none of the company’s batteries are in electric vehicles that are on the road today, they are used on test tracks, Carlsson said, adding that he expects Northvolt’s batteries to be delivered in vehicles from 2023 and in energy storage applications by the end of the next year.

VW, which placed a $ 14 billion contract with Northvolt earlier this year, announced Wednesday that it had invested $ 500 million ($ 609 million) of the $ 2.75 billion and that its 20% stake in the company remains unchanged.

“With this investment, we are strengthening our strategic partnership with Northvolt as a supplier of sustainable battery cells that are manufactured with renewable energies and are comprehensively recyclable,” said Arno Antlitz, Group Board Member for Finance and IT at VW.

Michael Bruun, EMEA Head of Private Equity at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, told CNBC: “Northvolt’s green battery production and partnership with leading European automotive OEMs will be critical to enabling the energy transition in Europe, and the additional capital raised can accelerate the implementation of the company. “

Northvolt batteries are based on “a different chemistry” than Tesla’s and performance is becoming increasingly similar, said Carlsson, who was Tesla’s vice president of supply chain in Palo Alto between 2011 and 2015.

Making the batteries sustainable is one of Northvolt’s biggest challenges, he added. If the world switched to electric vehicles powered by batteries from coal-based economies like China, it would create a new carbon footprint the size of Spain, Carlsson said. “If we do this on the basis of renewable energy … we can prevent this from happening,” he said.

The company’s main plant is in Sweden and is considering building a second in Germany if enough renewable energy sources are available.

By 2030, the aim is to achieve 150 gigawatt hours of used annual production capacity in Europe.

Categories
Health

U.S. Masks Corporations Battle to Compete with China

U.S. Mask Companies Struggle to Compete with China

In Congress, a bill with bipartisan support would allocate $500 million in annual spending over the next three years to support domestic manufacturers of vital medical equipment.

While industry executives commend these moves, they say that time is running out. The American Mask Manufacturer’s Association, a recently created trade group, said its 27 members had already laid off 50 percent of their work force. Without concerted action from Washington, most of those companies will go belly up within the next two months.

An immediate boost, they say, would be to rescind the C.D.C. guidelines, born during the pandemic, that force health workers to repeatedly reuse N95 masks, even though they are designed to be thrown away after contact with each patient. Many hospitals are still following the guidelines, even though 260 million masks are gathering dust in warehouses across the country.

“We’re not looking for infinite support from the government,” said Lloyd Armbrust, the association’s president and the founder and chief executive of Armbrust American, a mask-making company in Texas. “We need the government’s support right now because unfair pressure from China is going to kill this new industry before the legislators even get a chance to fix the problem.”

The association is planning to file an unfair trade complaint with the World Trade Organization, claiming that much of the protective gear imported from China is selling for less than the cost of production. The price for some Chinese-made surgical masks has recently dropped to as low as 1 cent, compared with about 10 to 15 cents for American masks that use domestically produced raw material.

“This is full-on economic warfare,” said Luis Arguello Jr., vice president of DemeTech, a medical-suture company in Florida that earlier this month laid off 1,500 workers who made surgical masks. He said that in the coming weeks, 500 other workers who make N95 masks would also likely be let go.

“China is on the mission to make sure no one in the industry survives, and so far they’re winning,” Mr. Arguello said.

Categories
Politics

Biden will compete with China, however received’t take Trump method

Biden will compete with China, but won’t take Trump approach

President Xi Jingping.

Getty Images

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden said his administration was ready for “extreme competition” with China, but his approach would be different from that of his predecessor.

“I will not do it like Trump. We will focus on the international traffic rules,” said Biden in a CBS interview clip that was released on Sunday.

“We don’t need a conflict, but there will be extreme competition,” he added.

In his interview with CBS, Biden said he has not spoken to China’s Xi Jinping since he rose to the highest office in the country last month.

“I know him pretty well,” said Biden, explaining that as Vice President he has spent more time with Xi than any other world leader. “He’s very smart and he’s very tough and – I don’t mean it as a criticism, it’s just a reality – he doesn’t have a democratic … bone in his body.”

Tensions between Beijing and Washington, the world’s two largest economies, increased under the Trump administration. Over the past four years, Trump has blamed China for a wide variety of grievances, including intellectual property theft, unfair trade practices, and most recently the coronavirus pandemic that killed more than 460,000 Americans.

Last week, Biden said he would work more closely with allies to secure a knockback against China.

“We will face China’s economic abuse,” said Biden, describing Beijing as America’s “most serious competitor.”

US President Donald Trump (L) and China’s President Xi Jinping shake hands at a press conference after their meeting outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.

Artyom Ivanov | TASS | Getty Images

“But we are also ready to work with Beijing if it is in the interests of the US. We will compete from a position of strength by improving at home and working with our allies and partners,” said the president in the state Department.

Although Biden has not yet spoken to Xi, Foreign Minister Antony Blinken spoke to his Chinese counterpart Yang Jiechi for the first time at the weekend.

In a tense appeal, Blinken Yang said the US would hold China accountable for its actions, particularly with regard to Taiwan. He also called on Beijing to condemn the recent military coup in Myanmar.

During his Senate confirmation hearing, Blinken told lawmakers that Trump “was right to take a tougher approach on China.”

“I strongly disagree with how he proceeded in a number of areas, but the rationale was the right one, and I think that is actually helpful for our foreign policy,” Blinken said a day before Biden’s inauguration.