Former German PV champion SolarWorld files for insolvency

Europe’s former biggest PV panel producer SolarWorld will file for insolvency, the company said in a press release. “Due to the ongoing price erosion and the development of the business,” SolarWorld is now “over-indebted” and lacks a positive prognosis, the press release reads. The company is now looking at whether a similar move is necessary for affiliated companies, it adds.
SolarWorld was finally overwhelmed by Chinese competitors, Christoph Steitz reports for news agency Reuters. After narrowly avoiding insolvency at the turn of the decade, “a renewed wave of cheap Chinese exports (…) was too much to bear for the group,” Steitz says. CEO Frank Asbeck, known as “the Sun King,” said SolarWorld had long “led the fight against illegal price dumping” but eventually succumbed to it, in what Asbeck described as “a bitter step” for Germany’s solar industry, the article says.

Read the press release in English here and the article in English here.

Please note: CLEW will publish an article on SolarWorld's insolvency and the effect on Germany's PV industry later today.