Turkey's Kalyon opens $400 mln PV panel manufacturing plant

Turkish conglomerate Kalyon Group said it has inaugurated an integrated solar panel manufacturing facility, Kalyon Solar Technologies Factory, worth $400 million (338 million euro),

Kalyon Solar Technologies Factory, in Ankara industrial zone, gathers all of the phases of solar panel production including R&D under one roof, the group said in an e-mailed statement on Wednesday.

"As of now, we started to produce solar panels with a yearly capacity of 500 megawatts in our established factory. Due to high demand from abroad, we will increase our production capacity to 1,000 megawatts this year," Kalyon Holding chairman, Cemal Kalyoncu, said in the statement.

The new factory will produce PV panels for the local 1,000 MW Konya Karapınar Solar Power Plant, in which Kalyon is investing $1.0 billion. The solar plant will cover an area equal to 2,600 football fields using 3.5 million panels, and will meet the annual energy needs of 2.0 million people, Kalyoncu added.

After the solar panels produced in the factory are installed at Karapinar Solar Power Plant, the renewable energy that would be generated by the plant will increase the solar energy production of Turkey by 20%, the company said.

In the first stage, the factory will employ 1,400 people. Its R&D centre covers an area of 2,500 square meters and will employ 100 researchers.

The factory will also manufacture polysilicon ingot, which is one of the most important phases of solar panel production. Thus, it will become the first solar panel manufacturer to produce ingot not only in Turkey, but also in Europe and the Middle East.

($=0.845137 euro)

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