But Skellefteå, the city Gorelczenko moved from the US for and where 500 employees work at the factory, gets most of the PR. Traditionally a mining town, the Arctic Circle is barely 200km away.

Northvolt is by no means the largest employer in town. That crown still goes to Boliden Mining, with 1,500 employees. And with Northvolt building a factory in Skellefteå, others are following in its footsteps, like the South Korean company Dongjin Sweden, which plans to build a factory nearby, with the purpose of delivering carbon nanotube slurry, a material used in batteries, to Northvolt.

On top of the 2,500 employees it has now, another 3,000 will be needed for a new gigafactory and R&D centre in Gothenburg, in southern Sweden, being built alongside Volvo. The company is hiring up to 150 people a month from...