Incendiary objects were allegedly placed under machinery on the site of Northvolt’s future battery plant in Montérégie, seriously endangering employees, according to the company.
Paolo Cerruti, President and CEO of Northvolt North America, denounced the acts of vandalism that took place over the weekend on Monday.
The term “homemade bomb” was initially used by the company, which later told The Canadian Press that it was “an incendiary object.”
“Our team discovered this morning that homemade bombs had been placed under machinery this weekend, with the clear intention of injuring our workers and presumably slowing down our operations. The triggering devices did not work,” reads a press release issued by the company.
These objects were allegedly placed under machinery this weekend, “with the clear intention of injuring our workers and presumably slowing down our operations,” reads a statement sent by the company. “The triggering devices did not work,” the company added.
Northvolt “vigorously condemns this cowardly attempt to frighten our teams and force us to interrupt our project which, we would like to remind you, consists of building a technology campus enabling the acceleration of the energy transition and the manufacture of batteries essential to decarbonization.”
Paolo Cerruti is scheduled to speak on the matter in a news conference Monday afternoon.
Repeated sabotage
This is not the first time that acts of sabotage have been committed on the site of the future battery factory.
At the end of February, the Régie intermunicipale de police Richelieu-Saint-Laurent opened an investigation after individuals laid nail mats on the site. A vehicle was also damaged, according to police.
A month earlier, people had also driven nails into trees that the Swedish company was planning to fell. On Jan. 23, the anonymous perpetrators of the sabotage had published a claim on Montréal Contre-information, a site that aspires to provide Montreal anarchists with a space to disseminate their ideas and actions through overlapping networks and trends.
The demand included a call for “a broad mobilization against the destructive Northvolt mega-plant project” and called for “attacking this life-ruining machine by targeting its weak points.”
Inserting nails into the trees would, according to the protesters, sabotage the equipment and make deforestation more costly and dangerous, since if a chainsaw hits a nail, it will damage or break the chain, and thus slow down Northvolt’s operations.
“Let’s sabotage the equipment, block the sites and harass the elected officials on the industry’s payroll,” read the press release.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 6, 2024.