The turnaround at Q CELLS after its acquisition via receivers by South Korea’s Hanwha Group is said to be ongoing after its official first year of operations.
The company said that its first year had been deemed a success, highlighting that it had been able to make “significant improvements in cost and efficiency”, while increasing capacity slightly as part of its new business strategy as a sister company to Hanwha SolarOne.
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Although the company is now private, Charles Kim, CEO of Hanwha Q CELLS said: “We have worked very hard and have improved our operations and performance in many areas. Financially, we are aiming for positive full-year figures in 2014.”
Kim also noted that the company had expanded capacity at its main integrated production plant in Malaysian from 800MW to over 900MW during the last 12 months, bringing production to a total of 1.1 GW. Hanwha Q CELLS has advanced pilot and production lines in Germany.
The Hanwha Q CELLS CEO said that existing production lines had been ramped further, suggesting the company was operating at full utilization rates.
“We have made important steps in fully utilising our capacities in all plants while increasing the efficiency of our production sites, thus reducing production costs significantly,” added Kim.
Also important to the company’s return to profitability, its regional sales operations have been improved, including leveraging the global sales network of Hanwha Group, notably in the booming Japanese market.
However, it is perhaps the financial stability provided by Hanwha Group that enables the company to continue to provide high quality and high performance products, while maintaining its renewed ‘bankability’ status.