Swiss engineer Oerlikon (OERL.S) has won a first 100 million euro ($143.7 million) order for its new solar production line and may have more in the pipeline, a boost for its recovery from near bankruptcy last year.
This is the first order to install Oerlikon’s new 120 megawatt line producing thin film silicon modules and comes from a new customer in Asia, Oerlikon said on Wednesday.
It said delivery of the ThinFab will begin in early 2012.
Oerlikon Chief Executive Michael Buscher told Reuters the group was in discussions with both European and Asian companies about more orders.
“In the second half of the year the plan is to gain momentum with one to two additional orders and additional equipment to prove the technology will be accepted on the market,” Buscher said.
The group was also buoyed by the fact it had managed to win out in the competitive Asian market.
Shares in Oerlikon, which makes a range of products, from coatings used in Formula One racing cars, to machines used to make solar cells, were up 1.8 percent by 0848 GMT, outperforming a near flat Swiss market .SSHI.
“Speculation about this order has already been in the market for some time. We await first-half results on 17 August to see development in profitability in the other 90 percent of the business to review our case,” Kepler Capital Markets analyst Christoph Ladner said
New solar production lines are attracting solar module makers who want to diversify into thin film solar panels — which are less efficient at turning sunlight into power than standard silicon-based cells — but are less expensive to produce.
The modules produced by the ThinFab line use far less silicon than traditional panels, and can be constructed for 50 euro cents per watt, about half the cost of their competitors.
Shares of solar companies have also been boosted by news that Germany, the world’s leading solar market, would shut down its nuclear reactors by 2022, in a hasty policy reversal in response to Japan’s nuclear disaster at Fukushima.
