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Market players in Solar Valley 21
A profitable investment: Q-Cells has made a name for itself internationally with the planning, erection and maintenance of entire solar power plants.
dreams. The story began in 1999 at a party held in a backyard in Berlin when business consultant Anton Milner met inventor and freethinker Reiner Lemoine, who had already been exploring the prospects of ecological power generation for some time. Reiner told Anton of his intention to build a factory manufacturing solar cells. Anton was very excited by the idea and began working on the financial planning. Two scientists – Paul Grunow and Holger Feist – also became involved in the birth of Q-Cells, the letter Q standing for quality. It wasn’t long before funding had been received from investors, banks and the state. Work on building Q-Cells’ first factory began in January 2001, and the very first solar cells came off the production line that summer. Within just a few years, Q-Cells mushroomed from almost nothing into a major industrial corporation – a
rare phenomenon in Germany, where large companies are usually backed by venerable industrial families or networks. Listed on the stock exchange since 2005, in 2007 Q-Cells became the biggest manufacturer of solar cells anywhere in the world. In 2010, the turnover of the Q-Cells Group totalled €1.35 billion. Its success story is partly down to the region’s political framework and its receptiveness. And located near Bitterfeld-Wolfen, Solar Valley transpired to be a blessing for the region. After all, following German reunification in 1990, tens of thousands of people in the region had been laid off. Around 14,000 people had worked at the Wolfen film factory alone, along with another 17,000 at the chemical plants in Bitterfeld. But given their affinity to technology and industry, these people now formed a large pool of potential
workers. Hence the visions of Q-Cells’ founders fell on fertile ground in terms of both local government and human resources. Last but not least, the new company enjoyed a strong tailwind in the form of the changing energy policy introduced by Germany’s coalition government made up of the Social Democrats and Greens. Q-Cells benefits from the close dovetailing between research, development and production at its headquarters in Bitterfeld-Wolfen. The company develops its products here and puts them into mass production as quickly as possible at its plants in Thalheim and Malaysia. Q-Cells quickly assumed the technological lead in the development and manufacturing of solar cells made out of monocrystalline and polycrystalline silicon. And the company repeatedly set new standards for the entire PV industry, such as the 6-inch cell format.