SolarWorld buys majority share in Bayer Solar

The German company SolarWorld AG has bought a majority share in Bayer Solar GmbH, Europe’s largest manufacturer of silicon solar wafers, the basic material for nearly 90 percent of the world’s current solar cell production.

The public-owned company Solar World AG, located in Bonn, Germany, announced in a press release on August 11 that it paid a sum of more than DM 100 million ($ 46 million USD) for a 82 percent share. The other 18 percent was purchased by Solar Holding Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH, Bonn.

The chemistry giant Bayer AG, Bayer Solar’s parent company, in an official press release dated June 21, said that it wanted to dispose of its subsidiary in order "to focus on the core competencies: health, agriculture, polymers and chemistry." For SolarWorld, which recently bought a 75 percent share in the Swedish module manufacturer GPV, the acquisition of Bayer Solar is a further step toward "establishing the first fully-integrated solar company in the world," – according to its CEO Frank Asbeck.

Bayer Solar’s annual production capacity is around 16 million polycrystalline wafers and 8 million monocrystalline wafers. This corresponds to a solar cell production capacity of 32 MW – approximately 15 percent of last year’s worldwide cell production of approximately 200 MW. Due to the recent PV boom in Germany, as well as the large market in Japan, Bayer Solar has completely sold out its wafer stock through the first quarter of 2001.

www.solarworld.de

Michael Schmela
© PHOTON International, August 11,  2000