Swedish startup founded by Joakim Sjoblom to make trinitrotoluene (TNT) for Europe's defence industry. After selling his fintech in 2024, the year Sweden joined NATO, Sjoblom turned his attention to bottlenecks in the defence industry. Swebal has raised €90m ($106m) from wealthy Swedish family investment funds. On December 17th 2025 it was granted environmental permits; the factory will open in 2028 and produce 4,500 tonnes of TNT a year.
The plant will be just 3km from Alfred Nobel's old dynamite factory in Sweden's explosives belt. Three nearby firms make nitroglycerine for civilian use, providing a pool of trained workers (the chemical process for making TNT is similar). All raw materials can be sourced within 550km.
Before the war in Ukraine, Poland's Nitro-Chem, the only TNT-maker left in the EU, could meet the bloc's needs with a capacity of around 12,000 tonnes a year. But the EU aims to source 2m 155mm artillery shells at home each year, requiring 20,000 tonnes of TNT for that alone; total European demand may exceed 30,000 tonnes. Forcit, a Finnish company, plans a €200m investment in a new TNT plant on Finland's west coast, and a Czech-Greek joint venture is spending €83m to restart a factory near Athens.
"Nuclear war would really set back cable."