Renewable energy news outlets reported in the middle of June that Meyer Burger, a Swiss provider of manufacturing equipment for PV products, has secured a €125 million loan from German financial institution Ostsächsische Sparkasse Dresden and a €60 million loan from another unnamed German financial institution to expand its production capacity. Meyer Burger has also revealed that it intends to build a new module production plant. The company currently has a cell production plant and a module production plant in Germany, and both facilities have just entered operation in the recent months.
With this additional €185 million, Meyer Burger now aims to expand its annual cell production capacity by 400MW to 1.4GW and its annual module production capacity by 400MW to 1GW by the end of 2022. According to reporting by renewable energy news outlets, the company’s long-term plan calls for 5GW respectively for cells and modules in 2026 and 7GW in 2027.
The location of the proposed new module plant has yet to be disclosed. Meyer Burger said that the new plant will be built by 2022, and it will have an annual production capacity of 400MW for large-size modules used in PV power plants. However, the company also said that the product mix of the new plant can be adjusted to meet the demand related to distributed generation. Meyer Burger’s operational module plant in the German city of Freiburg has an annual production capacity of 400MW and can be further raised to 800MW in the future. The facility building was formerly owned by SolarWorld and acquired by Meyer Burger last year.
Meyer Burger has been focusing on the development of the manufacturing process for HJT cells. Moreover, the company is now expanding into the cell and module sections of the supply chain in response to the changes in the market environment. Instead of remaining as an equipment provider, the company wants to transform itself into an integrated manufacturer. Consequently, it will not sell HJT cells to competing module manufacturers. To adapt to new trends and scaling up its production, Meyer Burger has been acquiring various assets and businesses. Next year, the company will launch new products including a glass-film module and a bifacial glass-glass module. The latter is touted to have a conversion efficiency rate of up to 22.9% and a power output of up to 570MW.