Freyr Battery announced it abandoned plans to build a battery factory in Coweta County, Georgia. The factory was announced in 2022, the first phase of which was expected to produce approximately 34 GWh with an estimated capital investment of $1.7 billion.
The company also announced it is moving its global corporate headquarters to Austin, Texas. In making that announcement, Freyr said it planned to sell the 368-acre site of the planned battery factory to an “undisclosed party” for gross sales proceeds of $50 million. The transaction is expected to close on February 15, 2025, and the company is expected estimated net proceeds to total $22.5 million following repayment of state and local grants.
The project was to be a multi-phase clean battery manufacturing project. Freyr officials had said that after the first phase, additional investment would amount to $2.6 billion by 2029. Over the lifetime of the project the company had estimated it would bring more than 720 U.S. jobs to Georgia.
FREYR was motivated to build the factory based on the strength of the U.S. renewable energy and electric vehicle industries coupled with the tax incentives associated with the Inflation Reduction Act.
The company currently has a gigafactory under construction in Norway called the Giga Arctic project with a planned nameplate capacity of 29 GWh.
The battery factory, however, was not Freyr’s only plans for its buildout in the U.S. Late last year the company announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire the U.S. solar manufacturing assets of Trina Solar for $340 million. The assets include a 5 GW, 1.35 million square foot solar module manufacturing facility in Wilmer, Texas that started production in November 2024. The facility is expected to ramp up to full production this year with 30% of capacity already contracted with U.S. customers.
Freyr reports that this is the first step in its plan to build out a vertically integrated domestic manufacturing footprint that will next include a 5 GW solar cell facility. The company is currently selecting a site and is targeting 2Q 2025 for the start of construction, anticipating that the first Freyr cells would roll off the line in the second half of 2026.
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