Like many technology start-ups in Belgium, the company began life as a spin-off from the government-backed Interuniversity Microelectronics Centre in Leuven, 30km east of Brussels, where chief executive Johan Nijs received a research PhD in crystalline silicon (c-Si) PV cells in the early 1980s.
By the late 1990s, the commercial potential of PV was coming into focus and Nijs, by then a renowned expert in the field, was gently prodded to move the company into the private sector..
His
