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Production by Meyer Burger in Bitterfeld-Wolfen
Photo: Jens Schlueter / AFP
The solar company Meyer Burger has announced that it is preparing to close its factory in Freiberg in Saxony.
This should take place gradually, the Swiss producer based in Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt announced on Friday.
Initially, production will stop in the first half of March.
The company expects this to result in significant cost savings from April.
The closure is scheduled to come into force at the end of April.
Instead, the solar module manufacturer wants to ramp up production in the USA, it said.
Meyer Burger had also recently brought up this step again and again.
The group justified the move by saying that “there is still no decision on political support measures to remedy the current market distortions caused by oversupply and dumping prices for solar modules.”
With its factory in Freiberg, Meyer Burger claims to have the largest solar module production company in Europe.
500 workers are employed at the Freiberg location.
Other manufacturers in the solar industry had also recently threatened to close local plants: China is flooding the market for solar modules with price dumping, and financial support from the state is needed to maintain the industry in Germany.
The federal government actually wanted to pay 1.3 billion euros in start-up financing.
But then the Federal Constitutional Court declared the budget unconstitutional.
The traffic light had to save money and the item fell through the cracks.
Instead, there should now be so-called resilience bonuses.
Solar components from German production should receive a subsidy from the state - and thus become more competitive compared to Chinese goods.
The industry association BSW-Solar puts the annual funding costs up to 2029 at a mid-three-digit million amount.
But so far there has been no agreement in the traffic light coalition.
hej/dpa-AFX