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The US manufacturer Trace Holdings, LCC, the maker of Trace inverters, has announced a merger with the Canadian firm, Xantrex Technology Inc., creating what Mossadiq S. Umedaly, Xantrex’s chairman and CEO, claims will be the world’s leading supplier of advanced power electronics. The combined annual sales of Trace Holdings – parent company of Trace Engineering and Trace Technologies – and Xantrex was $105 million USD in 1999. The merger was finalized on March 31 via an exchange of privately owned shares. No dollar figure was made public. The merged company will be under the Xantrex name, but the inverters will still be sold with the Trace logo. Umedaly declined to say if the merger would mean a change in the Trace product line prices. A new management team, combining people from both companies, will be in place by July 1. »This is truly a merger of equals,« says Umedaly, »with both sides coveting each other’s management.« Umedaly, who is now in charge of the combined companies, says that »in the short run« the merger will not result in any layoffs. Xantrex, based in Burnaby, British Columbia became a PV player last October when it took over the Vancouver company StatPower Technologies, whose product line includes small inverters. The merger with Trace gives Xantrex, whose power range had been limited to six kilowatts, a larger palette. »We now have a full range all the way from 50 W to 1 MW,« says Umedaly. The next step, says Umedaly, who has worked with Daimler-Benz in Germany, is moving Xantrex’s North American focus to include Europe and Asia over the next two years, »perhaps through an acquisition or a merger.« Trace Technology already has an office in Barcelona, Spain. William
P. Hirshman
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