Sanyo Electric plans to double production capacity of solar panels at its Shiga Prefecture site, hoping to tap demand spurred by government subsidies.
August 19, 2009 – Sanyo Electric plans to double production capacity of solar panels at its Shiga Prefecture site, hoping to tap demand spurred by government subsidies, notes the Nikkei daily. Construction on a new ¥4.2B (US ~$44M) building — including equipment — will begin in the next fiscal year (April) and start operations a year later, eventually ramping to full capacity of 100,000kw of panels, boosting the Shiga plant’s total output to 200,000kw and its global production capacity by 30% to 450,000kw.
Sanyo’s panels assembled domestically mostly are sold in Japan, but the company sells roughly two-thirds of its panels overseas, and its footprint for solar panels is truly global, the paper notes. Besides a second solar panel assembly site in Osaka, it produces cells at the Osaka site and at subsidiary Shimane Sanyo Electric; in June the firm said it would boost Shimane’s output by nearly 70% to 220,000kw, and build a new cell factory in Osaka. Meanwhile, European sales are sourced by assembly at a facility in Hungary, and North American assembly is through a plant in Mexico.
