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| Moser Baer sees sunlight again |
| Kirtika Suneja / New Delhi Sep 08, 2009, 00:46 IST |
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Will invest Rs 2k cr in photovoltaic biz after abandoning it earlier
Delhi-based Moser Baer, whose businesses range from optical media and entertainment to generating solar power, is seeing the first rays of hope after bearing the brunt of one of the worst cyclical downturns in the global semiconductor industry, which coincided with the global slowdown.
The company’s solar photovoltaic (PV) division had to stall production of PV panels at its Greater Noida plant. It also had to defer the setting up of its Chennai plant, for which it had signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to set up a Rs 2,000 crore facility for the manufacturing of silicon-based PV film modules.
“Bad times are behind us,” Rajiv Arya, CEO, MBPV, told Business Standard. “Credit is steadily coming back and there is an increased volume of interest and inquiries. There is a firmness in demand,” he added. The Greater Noida plant resumed full production on August 24. “Only the crystalline plant was closed at Greater Noida. Now it has reopened ahead of what we had thought,” said Arya, adding that the growth prospects are massive for the next two years and MBPV is all set for capacity expansion.
The company now plans to invest Rs 2,000 crore in its PV business over the next two financial years. Most of the investment will go into expansion at the company’s Greater Noida plant, whose current capacity is 125 Mw. The investment will also be used in other projects like Moser Baer’s Chennai plant. The company is also developing grid-connected solar farms in Rajasthan and Punjab, each with 5 Mw capacity. Moser Baer’s PV unit (MBPV) currently contributes 10-15 per cent to its total revenues.
“We want to make MBPV an over $1 billion unit by the end of calendar year 2010 and the capacity will be 1 Gigawatt (Gw),” Arya had earlier told this paper.
MBPV is also developing a 1 Mw solar project for commissioning by 2010 and its maintenance thereafter in Chandrapur, Maharashtra. It has been awarded an EPC (engineering, procurement, construction) contract to this effect by Mahagenco, the Maharashtra government’s power generation company. The project, to be commissioned in a consortium with Germany-based SunEnergy GMBH, is among the largest projects anywhere in the world using amorphous silicon (thin film) photovoltaic technology.
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