(Bloomberg) -- Swedish battery-maker Northvolt AB is building a new plant in northern Germany as European car manufacturers accelerate their shift to electric vehicles. 

The factory, dubbed “Northvolt Drei,” would produce 60-gigawatt hours of battery capacity annually, the company said Tuesday. Northvolt expects the plant to produce its first lithium-ion batteries in 2025. 

The new plant in Germany will boost Northvolt’s overall battery-cell manufacturing to over 170 gigawatt-hours, the most capacity of any battery maker in Europe. The company has a factory in Skelleftea, Sweden, and another in the planning stages in Gothenburg.

Located in Heide, Schleswig Holstein -- the northern region of Germany that borders Denmark and separates the North Sea from the Baltic Sea -- the plant will have access to “the cleanest energy grid in Germany,” Northvolt said in a statement. The region has an electricity surplus from onshore and offshore wind power and has grid interconnections to Denmark and Norway. 

Northvolt has secured more than $50 billion worth of contracts since early 2016 from electric-car manufacturers, including BMW AG, Volkswagen AG, Volvo Car AB and Polestar. 

The Heide project “fits well into a promising future cluster of clean technology ventures emerging in northern Germany,” said Peter Carlsson, the Northvolt’s co-founder and chief executive officer.

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