From pv magazine France
The trend of relocating PV industry assets in France continues. At the recent Smarter E exhibition in Munich, Moez Ben Amar, general manager of French glass manufacturer Alliaverre, told pv magazine France that by the end of this year or early 2023, the company plans to build a solar glass plant in Amiens, France, where its head office is located. This could see the light of day at the end of 2022, or even at the beginning of 2023.
At the moment, Alliaverre manufactures glass under OEM contracts with industrial interests in South Asia.
“Manufacturing and delivery times are currently 10 to 12 weeks, which mobilizes significant cash for our customers,” said Amar. “In addition, since the start of the Covid crisis, container transport prices have increased tenfold.”
To overcome these constraints, the fully automated site would therefore produce 50 MW per month or 600 MW per year of solar-grade glass. It would cover three market segments: 2 mm glass for glass/glass modules, glass in 3.2 mm for classic modules, and solar tiles.
The shaping of flat glass will be handled by cutting, coating and tempering the glass.
“We will have a large stock of large flat glass plates in France, which will allow us to reduce the processing and delivery time of solar glass to less than two weeks,” said Amar.
The company is now wrapping up a €5 million ($5.2 million) investment, in cooperation with a French investment fund. It also relies on regional aid to set up the new production facilities, in order to offset some of the additional manufacturing costs in Europe, which is about 30% more expensive than Asia.
Alliaverre originally specialized in mirrors. It established itself in France in 2005 and entered the solar glass market in 2014. It has worked with customers such as Systovi and is currently in the testing and prequalification phase for other manufacturers such as Recom-Sillia or Voltec Solar. It is also in an R&D partnership with South Korea-based Q-Cells. In Europe, its largest market is Germany, followed by Italy and Poland.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.