Moser Baer PhotoVoltaic (MBPV) plans to enter the US market and expand its presence in Europe by the end of the year. Europe is the major market where MBPV has a $350-400 million (Rs 1800-2,100 crore) business for three of its technologies — crystalline (best suited for cold climate), thin-film (appropriate for warm climate) and concentrator (for places getting direct sunlight).
PhotoVoltaic (PV) contributes around 10-15 per cent to Moser Baer’s consolidated revenues and the PV industry is growing at 30 per cent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) annually.
“As of now, we are operating in Germany and France; Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia are in the pipeline. Entering the US market and these expansions in Europe include taking modules and tying up with System Integrators there,” said Rajiv Arya, CEO, MBPV.
Japan is a tough market to enter and India is still a small market with less than 200 Mw of capacity, according to the company.
The firm has not received any dollar funding until now, but says credit is available and that will be used to fund these expansions by raising debt and equity in the ratio of 2:1. The company feels that besides Germany, the US and Japan are the biggest potential markets for its PV business, and for this, it intends to expand the crystalline silicon technology from the current 80 Mw to 300 Mw by 2010 and the thin-film capacity from 40 Mw to 600 Mw. The concentrator technology is to be expanded 20 times from 5 Mw to 100 Mw.
Moser Baer’s Group CFO Yogesh B Mathur says that these expansions will change the composition mix of technologies. “Presently, 90 per cent of the technology is crystalline and 3-4 per cent is thin film. In two years, thin film will be around 20 per cent while 70 per cent will be crystalline,” added Mathur. These expansions will aslo double MBPV’s headcount from 600 to 1,200 by 2009.
“We want to make MBPV an over $1 billion unit by the end of calendar year 2010 and the capacity will be 1 Gigawatt (Gw). Our current capacity is 120 Mw and this will go up to 300 Mw by the end of 2009 across different technology verticals,” Arya added.