May 28th, 2012 |
About a year ago, Spanish-held Siliken, an approximately EUR500 million business specializing in solar panel manufacturing, started operations in a plant in Timisoara, after investing EUR5 million in it.
Meanwhile, the Spanish company has doubled the number of employees, the capacity of the plant has increased and the manufacturing costs in Romania are so good that even the Asian market might become a target for exports.
At the same time, Siliken does not rule out investments in solar farms, which many experts believe to be the new green energy boom after wind farms. This is the second solar panel plant announced in Romania, after Renovatio group, whose shareholders are registered in Cyprus, invested EUR10 million in Satu Mare (northern Romania) in the summer of 2010. Its production facility was primarily designed for exports.
Although the solar power market is in its early stages in Romania, manufacturing facilities investments have left solar farm investment behind.
Things are completely different from the wind power business where turbines worth EUR1.5 billion have already been deployed in Dobrogea (SE Romania), yet none of these ‘windmills’ was made in Romania.
Siliken officials say they started manufacturing in Romania in early 2011. The decision to invest in this country was based on both the availability of skilled personnel and competitive manufacturing costs, which allows it to be competitive on any market in the world with a European product, the officials added.
A company presentation said there were about 200 people working in three shifts at the plant in Timisoara at the time of its opening, manning four assembly lines with a capacity of 50 MW per year each.
The plant occupies the site of a former production facility of footwear manufacturer Geox. The staff has doubled since the opening to almost 472 people working “directly or indirectly for us”, the company officials said, adding that the production capacity currently stood at about 310 MW.
Siliken exports most of the production of the plant in Romania, to the entire Europe and does not rule out exports to the US and Asian markets.
(English version by Loredana Frăţilă-Cristescu)
ZF
Posted in Energie