Joakim invested everything in the wind farm: "It's a difficult feeling"

He is one of the 40 small business owners who have worked on building roads in the upcoming wind farm in Viksjö, outside Härnösand. A project worth SEK 5.5 billion.

Joakim Berglund believed in the future, invested three million and bought, among other things, a new excavator, he says. But the revenue did not go away.

- I have emptied everything that can be emptied to do my job. Now I have to start selling tools for machines. It becomes a problem then when you have to start again because there are no tools so you can start driving, he says.

The main contractor Active Works is responsible for paying the companies down the contract chain. But Active Works puts the blame for unpaid invoices up, on the contractor Nordex, and claims that they haven't paid enough - something Nordex disagrees with.

- I do not intend to comment on our internal calculations, but I do not know what they are based on these figures. We have paid Active, maybe too much, for the work they have done, says Nordex Sweden's CEO, Timothy Carpenter.

In addition, the dispute over who will pay compensation for a several-week long construction stoppage, caused by environmental damage, has affected the smaller contractors. Nordex eventually chose to go by Active Works and pay them directly, but you now need to get that money back from Active Works.

And in the middle of the conflict are people like Joakim Berglund. He says that at the beginning of the construction stop he had three employees - but could only afford to have one left.

- I received a down payment, but we have not received production invoices from last fall. I have lost about one and a half million in sales over four months, ”says Joakim Berglund.

Have you ever wondered if you are exposed to a blow?

- Yes, it feels worse than that. When colleagues who have been in the industry for over 30 years have never experienced anything like it, you do not understand - why should we suffer from this? It is a difficult feeling that cannot be described.

After the interview, Joakim Berglund got a job at a warehouse at Hisingen in Gothenburg. He tells Mission Review that it is still "sweaty" financially but that he works extra every other weekend to make more money.