The Arvika factory specialises in the production of medium and large wheeled loaders and the manufacturer says it has already been successful in driving down its carbon emissions.
Thanks to the investment, Arvika will erect a new building, approximately 1,500 sq m, which will allow the facility to free up areas inside its assembly factory to be able to build electric wheeled loaders. While it has not yet been announced which models will begin their electric transformation and exactly when, production of both electric wheel loaders and more traditional wheeled loaders fitted with combustion engines will continue for now on the same production line.
The SEK65m (US$6.3m) investment from Volvo Group will allow for the phased production of electric wheeled loaders.
Volvo CE says the new investment is a milestone in its ambition to be entirely fossil free by 2040, and will also go a long way to fulfilling the company's aim for 35% of machines sold to be electric by 2030.
Coming soon after an announcement to invest in electric haulers from the company’s production facility in Braås, Sweden, Volvo CE says it is also a signpost that it is committed to achieving more sustainable solutions for customers across all its product lines. These announcements are part of an investment strategy that allows Volvo CE to advance electric solutions across its production facilities, including also the Konz facility in Germany, Belley in France and Changwon in South Korea, where other electric machines are made.
Arvika site vanager Mikael Liljestrand said: “This is a clear signal of our commitment to building the world we want to live in. It is more than 40 years since we last invested in a new building and what better reason now than to invest in our future, our planet and the next generation. We know that this is not only important to our customers and stakeholders, who rightly have high expectations on us, but it is also close to our hearts to be part of something bigger in building our future.”
Volvo CE has already introduced compact electric wheeled loaders to the global market with the L20 Electric and L25 Electric wheeled loaders. Together with the ECR25 Electric, ECR18 Electric and EC18 Electric compact excavators and the mid-size EC230 Electric excavator, Volvo CE claims to have one of the largest electric ranges on the market.
Volvo CE says it will ensure a phased introduction of elelctric machines model by model, taking into account all aspects of the electric ecosystem as it does so, including infrastructure requirements, charging solutions, battery handling and business models. It adds that the result will be reliable mid-size and larger electric wheeled loaders that can easily be integrated into customers’ business.
It is not the first sustainability initiative from the Arvika facility. Despite actually increasing production last year, the factory managed to reduce its internal climate footprint by 350 tons of CO2 thanks to a variety of emission reduction efforts.
“Our goal at the factory in Arvika, as well as Volvo CE and the entire Volvo Group is to be climate-smart and to produce fossil-free machines,” Liljestrand added. “Together, we are quite clear that we want to lead this transformation and be the driving force of more sustainable ways of working for the benefit of our planet. This investment is Arvika’s exciting first step towards electrification.”
Building work is set to begin later this year, with further announcements on when production will begin to come.
