Meyer Burger to create hundreds of jobs with new US site

The investment is a step in meeting Meyer Burger’s commitments to produce modules near end-customers, source material from regional suppliers. The development of a manufacturing facility in Arizona aims to provide flexibility, ease of access for customers in the North American market. The Arizona site selection follows the company’s announcement in September of this year to establish its first manufacturing facility outside of Europe in the United States, a decision also driven by Meyer Burger’s desire to support the U.S. clean energy transition. Arizona was selected due to a diversified and talented workforce that can support the company’s production needs. “Meyer Burger is thrilled to be establishing roots in Arizona and expanding our footprint to the United States,” says CEO Gunter Erfurt in a press release. “My sincere thanks to our partners in Arizona for their support throughout this process. Solar energy will be critical to achieving U.S. and global clean energy goals, and our proprietary heterojunction cell technology and patented SmartWire module technology enable us to produce products of the highest quality and performance in order to offer our customers economically competitive solar components.” The company says that Iiitial annual production capacity of the facility will be 400 MW and will include capabilities to manufacture solar modules for residential, commercial/industrial rooftop, and utility-scale applications. Production is expected to be operational by the end of 2022, creating an initial 250 manufacturing jobs, and over 500 jobs at full 1.5 GW capacity. Meyer Burger has entered into a lease as the first tenant of a recently constructed new building at market conditions. Meyer Burger has begun hiring key personnel to support installation of equipment and initial startup of the facility. The company intends to continue hiring through 2022 in order to train personnel and ramp production quickly.