Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger has reduced shifts for around 300 employees at its Thalheim cell manufacturing facility amid supply chain challenges.
The company said that the decision to move the workers to “short-time work” was motivated by “temporary material bottlenecks in production” and that shift changes would take place from 1 May, but did not provide further details on the changes.
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Meyer Burger also announced that it has adjusted its production processes at its 2GW Goodyear module assembly facility in the US state of Arizona, which has been the company’s focus of operations since the closure of its Freiberg module assembly plant in Germany.
Work at the Goodyear facility will now alternate between module production and “technical work”. While the company has not provided details on the facility’s output, this phrasing implies that the facility’s module output could be diminished. Meyer Burger is also preparing “further adjustments to the workforce” at the Goodyear facility to reduce costs.
A challenging year
These production cuts are the latest negative developments for the company, which earlier this month delayed the publication of its annual report amid an announcement of around US$257 million in annual losses.
Following last year’s Intersolar Europe event, then-Meyer Burger CEO Gunter Erfurt told PV Tech Premium that Europe’s inability to support a domestic PV manufacturing sector was a “massive disappointment”, and that this had ultimately driven the company to shift its focus to manufacturing efforts in the US. However, both Erfurt and then-CFO Markus Nikles resigned, and the appointment of Franz Richter as CEO has done little to help the company’s beleaguered US facilities.
Last year, Meyer Burger saw a number of US projects fall through, including the scrapping of a proposed 2GW cell manufacturing facility in Colorado, and the cancellation of a 5GW module supply agreement signed with D. E. Shaw Renewable Investments (DESRI).
