Schott Solar announces layoffs (Albuquerque)
Officials with Schott Solar CSP Inc. said they will lay off 30 employees hired through a temporary agency and suspend one of two concentrated solar power production lines in Albuquerque.
That will bring the total number of employees at the plant to 340, said Matthew Kraft, spokesman for the company. However, an unspecified number of those employees are being offered jobs on the company's photovoltaic side, he added.
"We're selling absolutely everything we make so stuff is just flying out the door," Kraft said of the PV side of the factory.
That is not true of the concentrating solar power part of the business, however. The company makes CSP components at its Mesa del Sol plant in Albuquerque. Gerald Fine, president and CEO of Schott North America, told the Business Weekly in June that most of its CSP products are going to European markets. The layoffs and the suspension of one CSP production line are due to a slowdown in the Spanish market, Schott officials said.
However, the company’s photovoltaic business has been growing rapidly, mostly in the U.S. Kraft said the federal stimulus has helped because it has offered inducements for solar power installation on businesses and homes. The second largest PV market right now is in New Jersey, he said, because of state incentives there.
Schott bought more land here and built a bigger factory than it needed initially in order to expand if the market developed.
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