US Startup Bets on Battery Boom With Northvolt Polish Purchase

The Northvolt battery systems plant in Gdansk, Poland, in November 2024. Photographer: Damian Lemanski/Bloomberg Photo by Damian Lemanski /Bloomberg

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(Bloomberg) — California startup Lyten is buying a Polish energy-storage factory from Northvolt AB in a bid to become a global leader with its sulfur-based batteries.

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Lyten, which last year bought another Northvolt’s plant in the US, is planning to use the Polish unit as a hub for its international operations. The Swedish manufacturer filed for bankruptcy earlier this year as it expanded too fast and run out of cash.

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After closing of the deal in the third quarter, Lyten seeks to ship its existing products from the plant right away and add its own lithium-sulfur batteries next year, according to the firm’s top executives.

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“Our goal is to be a globally leading energy storage system provider,” Chief Marketing and Sustainability Officer Keith Norman said in an interview. The opportunity in Poland is “a perfect fit” that allows to scale into the energy storage market “much, much faster.”

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The Polish plant, currently the largest such facility in Europe, has a capacity to produce 6 gigawatt hours of storage a year and may eventually reach 10 gigawatt hours. 

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Lyten will ramp up output to several hundred of megawatt hours next year and then sees an “exponential” growth to meet rising demand in Europe and beyond, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Dan Cook said in the same interview.

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Better Technology

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The company’s representatives declined to comment on the price of the asset, which Northvolt spent about $200 million to build. Lyten plans to make capital investment in the “order of tens of millions of dollars.”

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Lyten’s sulfur-based batteries weigh less and are cheaper to produce thanks to lower raw material costs than standard lithium-ion cells. They also have higher energy density, which is set to grow 20% a year in the coming decade, according to Norman.

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The other key advantage is that production is currently fully based in the US and is not reliant on China — the global leader in the battery supply. Later, Lyten will also seek to build the local supply chain of its Polish facility located in the Baltic port city of Gdansk.

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“The combination of performance and local supply chain is critical to win in Europe,” Norman said. “The consistent message we’re hearing from our European customers is that ideally they want energy systems manufactured in Europe and they want a supply chain that’s not dependent on China.”  

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According to Norman, it doesn’t mean that European clients won’t also purchase from China, but they really want an alternative supply chain to make sure they’re not fully dependent on one country to provide all of that infrastructure.

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Growing Market

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Europe’s battery storage market is poised to expand to about 400 gigawatt hours by the end of the decade from 61 gigawatt hours last year, according to a report by photovoltaic business association SolarPower Europe.