“production germany” Segment

Expansion of the wafer creates a basis for further growth. In 2009 the focus of our fully integrated production in Germany was on expanding our wafer production in Freiberg. In the fourth quarter we launched the ramp-up process to 250 MW. Our total capacity in Freiberg thus amounts to 750 MW for wafers. The new, state-of-the-art plant at the Industrial Estate East was largely completed by the end of the year under review and will be officially inaugurated in 2010. We are planning to further expand capacity to 1 GW. At a volume of € 350 million, this is one of the largest ever investment projects in the history of SolarWorld.

The expansion underpins our business with external wafer customers in the international solar cell industry and enables us to service the growing demand from our own module production, which will be tripled to 450 MW at our Freiberg site in 2010.  Facts: Worldwide production capacities 2010+ Within the value chain, nominal cell capacity was 200 MW.

Pooling silicon production and recycling. The group secures its silicon requirements for the growing wafer production – apart from external  Procurement – through in-house production and internal recycling. These activities have been pooled within Sunicon AG in Freiberg and ensure constant supplies of the key raw material in photovoltaics. Our subsidiary develops and evaluates alternative production methods. In 2009 the focus was on Sunsil^® silicon, which is produced by our joint venture JSSi GmbH. In 2009 Sunicon manufactured products that were developed in-house for the processing of powdery Sunsil^®: By means of being compacted into Sunbricks^®, Sunballs^® or Sunpearls^®, Sunsil^® is universally applicable for wafer production.

As a global pioneer and market leader we have been pushing ahead our recycling activities. We increased our reprocessing result of internally and externally collected raw materials (by-products from different stages of silicon production) to around 1,640 (previous year: 1,240) tonnes by optimizing our etching plants and by investing in new plants for the surface cleaning of silicon, for example. Through process improvements, we increased productivity by roughly ten per cent. To some extent we offered recycling as a service to customers. The proportion of recycling material in the raw material input of our Freiberg wafer production amounted to 21.2 (previous year: 20) per cent.

Sunicon also offers a broad range of recycling solutions to external manufacturers as a service. In the year under review, for instance, we recycled around 2,000 modules from the oldest Belgian solar park, Chevetogne, dating back to 1983. Recycling not only constitutes a reliable source of raw materials to our group but also opens up opportunities for new business fields due to our position as a market and technology leader. Economic performance opportunities