Solar factory

Solar-Fabrik Aktiengesellschaft for the production and sale of solar technology products
legal form	Corporation
ISIN	DE0006614712
founding	May 1996; Bankruptcy May 2015
Seat	Freiburg im Breisgau , Germany
management	Günter Weinberger, CEO;
Number of employees	250 (July 2013)
sales	96.2 million euros (2012)
Website	www.solar-fabrik.de

Former administrative building of Solar-Fabrik AG in Freiburg

The Solar-Fabrik AG , headquartered in Freiburg produced between 1996/1997 and 2015 crystalline solar modules. Customers were solar specialist companies, wholesalers and installation partners in several European countries.

history

After it was founded in May 1996 as a GmbH by the German solar pioneer Georg Salvamoser , the Solar-Fabrik initially produced production for its cooperation partner AstroPower (now part of General Electric ) in the USA, until its first own production facility for solar modules went into operation in Freiburg in October 1997. In 1999, the company moved into the new company building on Munzinger Strasse, which became known as the first zero-emissions factory in Europe . In the following years the young company developed with high growth rates. In July 2002 the solar factory was converted into a stock corporation, in the same year the company went public , which had grown to around 100 employees. A second production site was also put into operation in 2002.

While the Solar-Fabrik was initially a pure manufacturer of solar modules, the focus in 2005 and 2006 was on expanding into an integrated solar group. This realignment seemed necessary because the raw material supply for the entire industry was restricted by an acute silicon shortage. The aim was to cover the entire value chain from trading in solar wafers to their processing and cell production through to module production. For this purpose, Solar-Fabrik bought the wafers specialist GEWD in July 2005 and on July 1, 2006 secured a third of the cell manufacturer SEP in Singapore . The stake in this company, which processes wafers into solar cells, was increased to 90% in 2007.

In October 2006 the purchase agreement was signed with an 80% stake in OJAS Energy Ltd. closed. OJAS owns the Indian company Poseidon as a subsidiary, which specializes in the processing of cells and wafer material. OJAS later changed its name to Solar-Fabrik Silicon Services Ltd.

In 2008 and 2009, the availability of raw materials improved significantly, and silicon and cell prices fell. As a result, the company decided to limit itself to the core competence of module production and completely gave up the business areas of wafer trading and wafer processing.

In March 2009, another, highly automated plant for module production was opened in Freiburg-Hochdorf . With the commissioning of the third production facility for solar power modules, the production capacity of Solar-Fabrik AG increased to a total of 130 MW. The capacity increased to 210 MW in the third quarter of 2010. All three production sites have been combined at the Hochdorf site since the end of 2010.

In 2010, the company intensified its activities in Italy and France and opened a branch in Lyon .

The repair department was closed at the beginning of 2011, which led to discussions with the works council. At that time the company had 320 employees. Negotiations resulted in the continued employment of some employees in the department in other positions, the greater part accepted a severance payment, so that layoffs were avoided.

In August 2011, the company acquired 50.01% of the shares in SolSystems Energy GmbH, which plans and builds photovoltaic systems based in Stadtbergen , Bavaria.

At the end of 2011, solar cell production at the subsidiary Solar Energy Power Pte. Ltd. (SEP for short) in Singapore. The managing director of SEP and chief technology officer of Solar-Fabrik AG, Freddy Goh, left both functions in April 2012. At the end of April, CFO Martin Friedrich left the company. In June 2013, Solar-Fabrik AG and the photovoltaic wholesaler BayWa re Solarsysteme GmbH, a subsidiary of BayWa re renewable energy GmbH (BayWa re), entered into a sales partnership.

The insolvency proceedings began in May 2015. The administration moved to the production site in Hochdorf . Of the 155 employees, 65 lost their jobs. Operations ceased on June 30, 2015.

In May 2016, the Christian Laibacher group took over the solar factory in Freiburg. The production of modules at the Freiburg location has been successfully relaunched in record time.

share

The share has been listed on the regulated market of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since July 17, 2002 and belonged to the Prime Standard transparency segment until October 10, 2015 . At times it was included in the ÖkoDAX .

The largest single shareholder is the entrepreneur Alfred T. Ritter (chocolate manufacturer Ritter Sport ) with 19.03% of the shares . Since November 2010, Klaus Grohe , chairman of the supervisory board of the sanitary technology manufacturer hansgrohe , held almost 6% of the voting rights; from February 2012 it was 10.03%, making him one of the largest individual shareholders. The daughter of the company's founder Maria Salvamoser with 9.1% and the Kaiserslautern entrepreneur Klaus Heinrich Dienes with 10.38% hold further significant shares. The free float is around 51%.

Products

The company offered complete system solutions, from the module to the inverters and the mounting system to the monitoring of energy yields. The energy supply for production was based on renewable resources.

The product range comprised module types in various power classes between 140 and 275 watts peak for on-roof and in-roof installation. In addition, the Solar-Fabrik offered the PIKO inverters (manufacturer: Kostal Industrie Elektrik ) in the power range between 3 and 10 kilowatts (kW) under its own label "Solar-Fabrik" and the name "CONVERT". The assembly systems from Creotecc GmbH from Freiburg as well as a web portal for system monitoring completed the offer.