Kyocera to build solar modules plant in Tijuana, Mexico

Kyocera on May 31 announced that it will hold a groundbreaking ceremony on June 6 at its Tijuana maquiladora – Kyocera Mexicana, S.A. de C.V. – to officially commence construction of a second manufacturing facility there for solar photovoltaic modules.

Scheduled for completion in early 2008, the new facility in the Tijuana Industrial Park will consist of a two-story plant encompassing 223,000 square feet of production space, plus a 28,000-square-foot facility extension connecting the new factory to an existing Kyocera plant. When fully operational, the additions will more than quadruple Kyocera’s production capacity for solar modules in Tijuana – from a current capacity of 35 megawatts (MW) per year to 150MW by the end of March 2011.

The additions are part of a four-year plan to expand Kyocera’s global manufacturing capacity for solar modules, which are produced in Mexico, the Czech Republic, China and Japan. By the end of March 2011, these four sites will possess combined annual capacity to produce 500 megawatts (MW) of solar modules – enough to create 3.5-kilowatt solar-electric generating systems for 142,000 homes per year. The company will invest an estimated 30 billion yen (about $250 million) in plant and equipment during the course of the expansion effort, both at these module manufacturing sites and at its solar cell production center in Yohkaichi, Japan.