German inverter manufacturer Solutronic has filed for insolvency in a German district court.
News of the company's difficulties follows recent predictions of a worse-than-expected decline in revenue for inverter manufacturers and evidence of a slowdown in the inverter market in Germany.
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The court in Esslingen will now work to determine what will be done with the company’s assets, with Marcus Winkler appointed as provisional insolvency manager.
Solutronic was formed in 2004 and manufactures a range of inverters and energy management systems. In 2010 it posted what it said were record earnings, driven by a boom in its core German market.
But according to a report earlier this week by analysts IHS, the global market revenue for inverters is expected to decline by 9% to US$6.4 billion, down from US$7.1 billion in 2012, a partial result of what is now a declining market in Germany.
Total inverter shipments to Germany and Italy will drop by more than half to 5.7GW this year, down from 11.5 GW in 2012, IHS said, as subsidies in these countries are phased out.
These same markets saw inverter prices plummet by 60% in the second quarter of 2013, according to earlier IHS data.