French construction materials and solar equipment producer Saint-Gobain has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Solarwood Technologies buying the remaining 70% of shares it did not alre…
French construction materials and solar equipment producer Saint-Gobain has announced that it has completed the acquisition of Solarwood Technologies buying the remaining 70% of shares it did not already own in the Luxemburg-based solar panel manufacturer. Solarwood Technologies“s PV roof tiles plant has an annual capacity of 15MW, which Saint-Gobain intents to increase to 30MW. We“re expanding fast in France right now and looking to build another PV tile plant on a second site currently under selection, which should be up and running in the second half of 2010, says Benot Richard, managing director of Saint-Gobain Solar Systems. Solarwood, which markets its productions in Luxemburg, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany, as well as France, is Saint-Gobain“s biggest supplier of PV roof tiles. Saint-Gobain, which took over Shell“s stake in CIS (copper, indium and selenide) thin film solar producer Avancis in August 2009, is a major manufacturer of mirrors for parabolic troughs used in solar thermal plants and glass for PV panels, along with supplying PV roof systems.