Midsummer shelves plans for solar cell factory in Sweden

Swedish thin film solar manufacturer Midsummer is putting plans for a new solar cell manufacturing factory in the southeastern municipality of Flen on hold.

Plans for the factory, intended to produce copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS) solar cells, were first announced in 2023.

Midsummer says the financing of the factory was negatively impacted after the company was rejected for an expected investment grant from the Swedish Energy Agency’s Industriklivet program.

“We would be happy to establish a new factory in Sweden in the future when commercial and financial conditions allow it, but it will not happen within the framework of the specific project planned for Flen for which we have been awarded time-limited EU support,” commented Midsummer CEO Eric Jaremalm.

The company confirmed it will forgo EU funding it has been awarded for the factory.

“Even with the EU contribution, self-financing a completely new factory of this size in Flen would have cost us several hundred million kronor and we do not find it responsible to take out such large loans or ask our shareholders for such amounts when we have found other ways to finance our expansion,” Jaremalm added.

Midsummer’s statement adds that “new attractive and significantly less capital-intensive” opportunities for establishing factories outside in Sweden have emerged.

The company explained it is shifting its long-term production strategy to an asset-light model based on collaboration with major industrial partners which will see Midsummer supply machinery and raw materials to enable local production of solar cells on different continents, rather than owning and operating all the factories itself.

Last year, Midsummer was commissioned to supply machinery and equipment with operational responsibility to a solar cell factory in Colombia. The company’s latest update says it has received machinery orders worth SEK 380 million ($39.6 million) for this establishment.

Midsummer adds it is also expanding production in its own factory in Bari, Italy, towards an annual production of 50 MW. Earlier this year, pv magazine profiled the facility.