Norwegian startup Morrow Batteries has appointed Lars Christian Bacher, an oil industry veteran, as its new chief executive officer, the company said on Monday.
Bacher had spent 30 years at Norway's largest oil and gas firm Equinor, where he held various executive positions, before joining private equity firm HitecVision in 2021 as a senior partner.
"I am thrilled by the opportunity to join this once-in-a-lifetime Norwegian industry adventure," Bacher said about his move to Morrow.
Morrow aims to build a so-called gigafactory in southern Norway to produce lithium-ion battery cells for transport and energy storage from 2024, with annual capacity expected to increase to 43 GWh by 2028 from an initial 1 GWh.
Swedish rival Northvolt, which late last year began production at Europe's first gigafactory battery facility, aims to scale up to an annual capacity of 60 GWh by 2030.
(Reuters/Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik)