Northvolt’s Battery Making Boom Fizzles Out in Northern Sweden

The crisis at Swedish battery maker Northvolt AB is rippling through communities in the north of the country, where unpaid bills and scrapped projects threaten the livelihoods of suppliers and wage earners alike.

This week, the Northvolt unit managing the expansion of its main battery-cell factory in northern Sweden filed for bankruptcy, saddling suppliers with about 606 million Swedish kronor ($58.3 million) in claims. The move followed last month’s decision to shed 1,600 jobs in Sweden — including 1,000 in Skelleftea, home to the factory — in response to a deepening cash crunch.

Titan Konstruktion, a local builder that worked ...