Achi news desk-
Homemade bombs are suspected to have been placed under machinery at the site of Northwalt’s future battery plant in Monterrey, seriously endangering workers, according to the company.
Paolo Crotti, president and CEO of Northvolt North America, condemned the weekend vandalism on Monday.
“Our team discovered this morning that home-made bombs were placed under the machines over the weekend, with the clear intention of harming our workers and apparently slowing down our operations. The activation devices did not work,” said a press release issued by the company.
Northwalt vigorously condemns “this cowardly attempt to intimidate our teams and force us to interfere with our project, which we would like to emphasize, consists of building a technological campus that enables the acceleration of the energy transition and the production of essential batteries for decarbonization.”
Paolo Cerotti is scheduled to speak on the matter at a press conference on Monday afternoon.
Repetitive trauma
This is not the first time that acts of sabotage have been carried out at the site of the future battery factory.
In late February, the Régie intermunicipale de police, Richelieu-Saint-Laurent, launched an investigation after people placed mats of nails at the site. The vehicle was also damaged, according to the police.
A month earlier, people also hammered nails into trees that the Swedish company planned to cut down. On January 23, Saboteurs Anonymous posted a claim on Montréal Contre-information, a website that aims to provide Montreal anarchists with a place to spread their ideas and actions through overlapping networks and trends.
The demand included a call for “broad mobilization against Northwalt’s destructive mega-plant project” and called for “attacking this life-destroying machine by targeting its weak points.”
Inserting nails into trees will, according to the protesters, interfere with the equipment and make deforestation more expensive and dangerous, since if a chainsaw hits a nail, it will damage or break the chain, thus slowing Northwalt’s operations.
“Let’s sabotage the equipment, block the websites and harass the elected officials of the industry,” the press release reads.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on May 6, 2024.
