Sweden’s Northvolt says construction will continue on its $7-billion Montreal-area electric-vehicle battery plant even though the company has launched a strategic review of business operations, CBC reported.

Slated to conclude this fall, Northvolt’s strategic review involves an evaluation of the company’s new EV battery plant development timelines and capital allocations.

The strategic review coincides with a decline in global EV demand as Ford and General Motors plan to scale back production. Northvolt is reviewing plans to develop a second EV gigafactory in Sweden.

In a statement sent Tuesday to CBC, a Northvolt spokesman said the review will determine project timelines, but it is too soon to say what impact it could have on the plant being built in Saint-Basile-le-Grand and McMasterville, Que.

“Our commitment and intentions are unchanged: To play a central role in Quebec’s energy transition by manufacturing the greenest batteries in the world,” the spokesman said in the statement to CBC.

The Montreal-area plant project is Northvolt’s first outside of Europe. It will be located on 170 acres of land located about 30 kilometres east of Montreal. The first phase of the plant is slated to produce lithium-ion batteries with 30 gigawatt hours of capacity and create 3,000 jobs.

The initial phase is slated to include adjacent cathode-materials production facilities, marking the first fully integrated EV battery production facility in Canada and one of few in the world.

Ottawa and the Quebec government have agreed to provide Northvolt with operation support that matches the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act’s advanced manufacturing credit of US$35 per kilowatt hour.

The feds and Quebec will also provide the Quebec plant with C$4.6 billion of additional production incentives, with the province paying one-third of that total. The two governments will also furnish C$1.34 billion and $1.37 billion, respectively, in capital commitments.

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