Showa Shell Sekiyu KK announced that the company reached an annual revenue increase of 12.3% to USD 28.28 billion in its financial report of fiscal year 2013. Its Energy Solution business, including Solar Frontier KK, showed an 80% increase to USD 1.39 billion in the annual revenues.
“Spurred by Japan’s feed-in tariff policy, the strong demand to solar cells drove Solar Frontier to run its factory at full capacity,” said a representative of Showa Shell.
With strong demand and full-run factories, the Energy Solution division hit its first profit to approximately US $170 million in fiscal year 2013, the first ever year since 2006 when Showa Shell began its solar business. The company also expressed its ambition to target on the Japanese market to increase 8% from 2013 in 2014. To expand its capacity, Solar Frontier has launched a factory of 150MW capacity in Tohoku (northern-east region) for CIS / CIGS thin film PV modules and is expected to come online in 2015.