PV manufacturing equipment specialist Meyer Burger has extended short time working initiatives deployed at its German operations to both its sites in Switzerland to reduce operating costs during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The company noted in a statement: “Temporary plant closures and restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic at customers also delay Meyer Burger's activities.”
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As a result, its Swiss sites in Thun and Hauterive will have shorter working hours from 6 April 2020, while the Board of Directors and the Executive Board will take a 15% cut in remuneration and salaries for an extended period.
Meyer Burger also said that it has concluded the sale of its inkjet printer business to SÜSS MicroTec for CHF4.1 million (€3.8 million), while approximately 30 employees at its Eindhoven site in the Netherlands would join SÜSS MicroTec.
Within recently released 2019 financials, Meyer Burger noted that it was expecting large volumes of orders from multiple customers for its heterojunction technology (HJT) in 2020.
According to PV Tech’s ongoing tracking of PV manufacturing capacity expansion announcements, at least 14GW of HJT cell and module technology planned expansions were announced in 2019, compared to just 1GW of expansion plans announced in 2018. Since the start of 2020, cumulative HJ-based expansion plans have topped 35GW.