Mitsubishi Electric Corp, the world’s sixth-largest maker of solar cells, said it intends to more than triple sales at its solar-power business as rising prices of oil boost demand for renewable energy.
Revenue at the business will climb to ¥170 billion (US$1.56 billion) in the 12 months ending March 2012, from ¥50 billion last fiscal year, senior executive officer Kazuyuki Nakamura, who heads the division that includes solar operations, said at a briefing in Tokyo yesterday.
NAGANO
PHOTO: AFP
The company will invest ¥50 billion to expand output and build a second factory in Nagano, central Japan, which is scheduled to be completed by December next year, Tokyo-based Mitsubishi Electric said.
The factory will help Mitsubishi Electric raise its solar-cell output capacity to 500 megawatts in the year to March 2011, from 150 megawatts in August last year, it said.
Mitsubishi Electric follows larger rivals Sharp Corp and Kyocera Corp in bolstering solar-cell production to meet demand in an expanding market.
SALES
Global sales of solar cells will climb almost fourfold to US$40 billion in 2010 from US$10.8 billion in 2006, Daiwa Institute of Research Ltd said.
Mitsubishi Electric aims to increase its share of the solar-cell market to 10 percent in 2012 from 3.2 percent last year, Nakamura said.
Sharp, which competes with Germany’s Q-Cells AG to be the world’s largest solar-cell producer, said in March it will spend ¥72 billion to build a solar-battery factory.
With the new plant, Sharp targets 1 gigawatt of thin-film solar-power capacity by April 2010, up from an estimated 160 megawatts by October this year, it said at the time.
Mitsubishi Electric rose 0.8 percent to close at ¥930 on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, compared with a 0.2 percent decline for the benchmark Nikkei 225 Stock Average.
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry was scheduled to hold a briefing yesterday on its budget plans, including funds to promote efficient power and use of alternative energy.
The ministry said it plans to ask for more than ¥100 billion in the next fiscal budget to promote the development of innovative technologies for addressing global warming, the Nikkei Shimbun reported on Tuesday, without saying where it obtained the information.
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