SolarWorld advised that with the sale of its shares in the South Korea joint venture module plant, the company would be focusing on expanding and improving its module production sites in Germany and the US. Financial details regarding the sale of its shares were not released, but the company advised that its Saxony, California and Oregon production facilities are undergoing expansion in order to meet growing demands. Combined, the three plants are expected to have a total production capacity of more than 1GW by the end of the year.
SolarWorld notes that in order to reduce costs it relies on its equipment, automated manufacturing processes and logistics with its share of labor costs in its high-tech products reaching less than 10%. The company also highlighted that in some instances travel costs can diminish the amount of money saved on production costs. With that in mind, SolarWorld plans to supply its customers in Asia with solar products from US and Germany via its future SolarWorld Asia Pacific/Singapore division.
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“Thanks to the logistics advantages of our on-the-spot production and our already established distribution networks we expect to be able to more than triple our sales”, explains Chairman and CEO Dr. Frank Asbeck. The current sales figures confirm this trend. Thus, the group’s sales in the US market by June this year already match total annual sales of the previous year. At the same time the group is expecting an impetus for the European markets in view of the current legislation to fund renewable energies in Germany and the other European countries.”