Freyr Battery teams up with Siemens on gigafactories

BERLIN (Reuters) - Luxembourg-based Freyr Battery sealed its partnership with Siemens at the Hannover Messe conference on Monday, making the German technology company its preferred supplier in automation and digitalization technology.

Freyr plans to equip its planned gigafactories in Norway and the United States with Siemens technology, and the two companies will join forces along the entire battery design and manufacturing process, the firms said in a statement.

"This relationship is much broader than the usual customer-supplier relationship and is strategic in nature," Freyr chief executive Tom Einar Jensen told Reuters.

Instead of the conventional 18 production steps, Freyr wants to make do with eight, he said, adding: "With Siemens, we can ramp up production faster and better, and with a much lower reject rate. That normally takes up to 36 months, we want to do it in half that time at most."

(Reporting by Alexander Huebner, writing by Miranda Murray, editing by Rachel More)