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One of Europe’s largest solar-panel manufacturers, Meyer Burger, is to cut nearly a fifth of its workforce and overhaul management as it tries to return to profitability in the face of stiff competition from Chinese rivals.
The Swiss company said in a statement on Wednesday that chief executive Gunter Erfurt would step down, to be replaced by executive chair Franz Richter. Chief financial officer Markus Nikles will also depart.
The company would shed about 200 — 19 per cent — of its roughly 1,050 global workforce by the end of 2025, it said.
In March, Meyer Burger, which has factories in Germany and the US, reported a loss of SFr292mn for the 2023 calendar year, blaming “severe price undercutting in the European solar market” for missing sales targets. It has postponed publication of results for the half-year to June 30 until at least the end of this month because of the challenges of reflecting its restructuring efforts in the figures.
Solar power has grown strongly over the past few years, with a record 346 gigawatts installed globally in 2023 — potentially enough to power hundreds of millions of homes — driven by a surge in China.
However, panel makers have struggled because of a surge in manufacturing capacity, also fuelled by China, which has depressed panel prices and pushed many manufacturers into losses.
Panel prices plunged more than 60 per cent between July 2022 and July 2023, according to data from BloombergNEF — triggering calls from Meyer Burger and others for more protectionist trade measures in Europe.
In a lengthy statement on social media site X, outgoing chief Erfurt on Wednesday accused European politicians of being “too afraid of China” and “not prepared to protect the European solar industry against unfair competition”.
“The industry of the future has been sacrificed to China,” he wrote, warning this would “one day be regretted”.
“Europe has both the technology, the trained people and the entrepreneurial creativity to succeed,” he wrote. “It just needs industrial policy that not only recognises the signs of the times in speeches, but courageously translates them into action.”
Meyer Burger said on Wednesday it would focus on “achieving profitability as quickly as possible” and it was considering selling some of its technology and equipment to customers to raise extra revenue.
Its shares were down 6.3 per cent in mid-morning in Zurich at SFr1.80, giving the company a market capitalisation of SFr57mn. That is 98 per cent down from the SFr108 peak reached in September last year.
Meyer Burger has shifted some production to the US, tempted by the subsidies on offer to manufacturers in President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.
However, it has also struggled there, and in August it announced a planned 2GW solar cell factory in Colorado was “no longer financially viable” and would not go ahead.
In addition, it suspended plans to expand capacity at a new panel assembly site in Goodyear, Arizona. It shut a panel assembly site in Freiberg, Saxony, in April, but still has a cell manufacturing facility in Thalheim.
Of the 200 roles due to go, Meyer Burger said there was a “disproportionate reduction in Europe” although it did not specify how many.
The company highlighted new chief executive Richter’s “extensive experience restructuring industrial companies”.
He is currently chair of the supervisory board of Dr Hönle, a German supplier of technology using ultra-violet light for manufacturing and other applications.
