The Bosch Group wants to further expand its photovoltaics business and is planning a new manufacturing site in the Batu Kawan region in Penang, Malaysia. With a planned investment of some 520 million euros, the construction project for the new manufacturing site is one of the biggest in the company’s history. “With this investment, Bosch is moving further along the path of internationalization it has already set for its photovoltaics business,” said Franz Fehrenbach, chairman of the Bosch board of management, in Stuttgart. The new manufacturing site in Batu Kawan will mainly serve Asia’s solar energy market, which is growing strongly. In the coming years, the Asian market is set to see average annual growth of 30 percent. Components for manufacturing sites in other countries will also be produced at the new Malaysian site, said Fehrenbach.
Construction of the new site is set to begin before the end of this year. “The planned facility will cover the entire value-added chain, from silicon crystals – known as ingots â?? and solar cells to the modules which can be installed on roofs or in solar power plants,” said Holger von Hebel, chairman of Bosch Solar Energy AG. Start of production is planned for the end of 2013. Construction is expected to be completed the following year. By then, some 2000 associates will be working at the new site in Penang, producing solar power plants with a total output of 640 megawatts peak each year. The module production lines will reach an annual capacity of 150 megawatts peak. The megawatt peak (MWp) unit is commonly used in the solar energy industry to indicate the power rating, and thus the best possible output, of a solar cell. In practice, current efficiency depends strongly on where in the world the cell is in use. While the annual cell production of the new manufacturing site in Malaysia would cover the energy needs of 165,000 households in central Europe, the number of households covered in Malaysia would be almost twice as high, at up to 300,000.