August 19, 2009 - Sanyo Electric
plans to double production capacity of solar panels at its Shiga
Prefecture site, hoping to tap demand spurred by government
subsidies, notes the Nikkei daily. Construction on a new
¥4.2B (US ~$44M) building -- including
equipment -- will begin in the next fiscal year (April) and
start operations a year later, eventually ramping to full capacity
of 100,000kw of panels, boosting the Shiga plant's total output to
200,000kw and its global production capacity by 30% to 450,000kw.
Sanyo's panels assembled domestically mostly are sold in Japan, but
the company sells roughly two-thirds of its panels overseas, and its
footprint for solar panels is truly global, the paper notes. Besides
a second
solar panel assembly site in Osaka, it produces cells at the
Osaka site and at subsidiary Shimane Sanyo Electric; in June the
firm said it would boost Shimane's output by nearly 70% to
220,000kw, and build a new cell factory in Osaka. Meanwhile,
European sales are sourced by assembly at a facility in Hungary, and
North American assembly is through a plant in Mexico.