Swiss solar manufacturer Meyer Burger has just pulled the plug on its US solar module factory in Arizona and laid off nearly 300 workers.
On May 29, all 282 remaining employees at the Goodyear, Arizona, factory received termination notices, and operations were shut down immediately. The site was still in its ramp-up phase and had a planned annual production capacity of 1.4 gigawatts. Meyer Burger had just started assembling solar cells imported from its factory in Germany.
The company says it’s been forced to shut down the US plant due to a lack of funding. The future of the Goodyear facility is now uncertain.
Meyer Burger is currently in talks with bondholders as it tries to restructure debt tied to two convertible bonds that mature in 2027 and 2029. Those bonds were issued by its subsidiary MBT Systems GmbH and guaranteed by the parent company.
It’s unclear what this means for Meyer Burger’s solar cell factories in eastern Germany, a company spokesperson told German press agency dpa. Around 300 employees at each site, in Hohenstein-Ernstthal in Saxony and Bitterfeld-Wolfen in Lower Saxony, were furloughed last year.
Meyer Burger has struggled for a few years, in no small part due to competition from cheaper Chinese solar imports. In 2024, it cut around 20% of its 1,000-person workforce, even as it moved ahead with US expansion plans. In December, the company secured nearly $40 million in bridge financing from creditors to keep things afloat, but that money appears to have run dry.
Meyer Burger says it will share more information as it becomes available.
Read more: Meyer Burger abandons German solar cell factory plans to build a US factory instead
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