Quebec’s economy minister says that the Canadian province has managed to recoup part of its investment in bankrupt electric vehicle battery maker Northvolt AB.

“We have guarantees to recover the sums invested in the purchase of the Northvolt site,” Minister Christine Frechette said Friday night on X, referring to the land where a Northvolt battery plant was to be built near Montreal. “We have exercised these guarantees and have recovered, in the first instance, nearly 200 million on our loan.”

Quebec has lost C$270 million on its equity investment in Sweden-based Northvolt, but still had a senior secured loan tied to the land acquired to build the plant, which totals nearly C$260 million with interest and fees, according to a court filing aimed to place the company’s Canadian subsidiary under creditor protection.

The Quebec government had managed to freeze Northvolt’s Canadian unit bank accounts when it collapsed in 2024.

A Quebec Superior Court judged declared the subsidiary insolvent Friday, and allowed the company to rehire about 15 employees to maintain the construction site, according to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Northvolt had laid off its workforce last week after the Quebec government pulled its funding in the project.

In August, Lyten Inc., a California startup that develops lithium-sulfur batteries, agreed to purchase all of Northvolt’s remaining European assets. No financial details were released, but the American purchaser said then that it was buying the assets at a “significant discount” to their estimated value of roughly $5 billion.