The US-based First Solar Inc was Friday granted a license to build a US$1-billion thin-film solar panel plant in Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City.
The first phase of the plant, which will be located on a 44-ha land site in Cu Chi District, will break ground in February and be completed in September 2012.
Four assembly lines will be installed during the phase, which will create approximately 600 jobs, Tymen de Jong, the firm’s deputy chairman in charge of global production, told Tuoi Tre.
The second phase will be carried out between February 2013 and 2014 with the whole facility to be finished in 2015.
The new plant, together with another under construction in the US, will help boost the company’s annual manufacturing capacity by nearly 500 megawatts.
Those facilities, combined with First Solar’s eight assembly lines in Malaysia, four lines in Germany, and two lines in France, will nearly double its production capacity from 1.4 gigawatts (1,400 MW) in 2010 to more than 2.7 GW in 2012.
First Solar is the largest company in the solar power sector with a market value of $11.7 billion.
