It appears a buyer has been found for Swiss inverter manufacturer SolarMax, which was declared insolvent at the end of last year, with the company set to relaunch in June.
SolarMax’s parent company Sputnik Engineering went into administration in December. In materials circulated to shareholders at the time, SolarMax said it had unsuccessfully looked for buyers before making the declaration and signing contracts with Switzerland’s official office for bankruptcies and debt collection, Schweizer Konkursämter. At the time analysts including IHS spoke of rapidly increasing competition in the inverter market globally, making business difficult even for Europe’s bigger manufacturers including SolarMax and SMA.
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In a brief statement issued on Friday, SolarMax announced its intention to re-emerge in June with ‘SolarMax 2.0’. According to the company the relaunch will include new support for customers including a service hotline and repairs, along with some new products to be added to the SolarMax range.
The company also says it will unveil a new “product innovation” next month at the Intersolar Europe show. While declining to give details, SolarMax said it will be a product to integrate PV generation into home automation, an area that is increasingly of interest to the solar industry. A recent GTM Research report on “Energy in the connected home” looked closely at some solar companies’ recent efforts in this field.
SolarMax’s new owner is a company called Soma Solar Holdings, newly established in March and with shareholders to include Mathias Mader, CEO of German-headquartered renewable and sustainable energy company Actensys. A SolarMax spokeswoman based at the Actensys headquarters in Ellzee, Bavaria, confirmed the news to PV Tech this morning.