Panasonic freezes Malaysian PV factory amid solar review

Japanese electronics giant Panasonic will freeze investment in its Malaysia PV panel factory as it reviews its strategy for the solar business.

The company – which today forecast it will make an annual loss of nearly $10bn across all of its businesses – will start operations at the new 300MW solar plant in Malaysia in December, bringing its global capacity to 900MW.

It was expected to ramp up output at the plant to 1.5GW by 2016 in a bid to grow the business into a leading player.

However the firm revealed today that it was taking a 148bn yen ($1.9bn) impairment charge for restructuring its solar business and would not make additional investments in Malaysia.

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