India’s Borosil Renewables buys 86% stake in Europe’s largest solar glass maker

From pv magazine India

India’s Borosil Renewables (BRL) announced it acquired, through its overseas wholly-owned subsidiaries, an 86% stake in Interfloat Group, Europe’s largest solar glass manufacturer.

Interfloat Group is based in Germany and Lichtenstein and has been serving customers in the solar industry since 2008. It operates through Glasmanufaktur Brandenburg GmbH (GMB), which has a production facility near Berlin, and Liechtenstein-based Interfloat Corporation, which supplies the glass to the European market.

GMB operates a solar glass plant with a production capacity of 300 tons/day. With its acquisition, Borosil Renewables’s solar glass manufacturing capacity will grow 66% to 750 tons/day. Its total capacity should increase to 1,300 tons/day with the commissioning of a new furnace with a capacity of 550 tons/day in India over the next two months.

This acquisition will make a wider range of solar glass available to BRL’s expanded customer base in Europe.

“The overseas wholly owned subsidiaries of the Company [Borosil Renewables], namely, Geosphere Glassworks GmbH and Laxman AG, have completed the acquisition of 86% stake in GMB Glasmanufaktur Brandenburg GmbH (GMB) and Interfloat Corporation (Interfloat), respectively. Consequently, both GMB and Interfloat have become step-down subsidiary companies of the company,” stated Borosil Renewables in a stock exchange filing.

“Furthermore, Borosil is committed to investing in manufacturing in Europe and will be increasing capacity at GMB’s Tschernitz plant at an appropriate time in the near future. This means that BRL and Interfloat will be able to supply significantly higher volumes of solar glass to their present and new customers by improving the serviceability as a result of the production from two locations now,” stated the company.