Photo voltaic disaster hits Fronius laborious: 350 individuals should go

Within the extremely unstable photovoltaics market, Higher Austria’s flagship firm Fronius has needed to pull the emergency brake after sturdy progress and has reported 350 individuals to the employment service for dismissal. The workers on the Sattledt plant had been knowledgeable of this yesterday. Right this moment, Wednesday, there might be data occasions all through the corporate. It’s sure that the 350 haven’t solely been reported for dismissal, however will truly should go.

Within the photo voltaic division, there was monumental demand after issues within the provide chain that Fronius was unable to fulfill. Because of this, 420 million euros of its personal funds had been invested in new capacities in Sattledt and Český Krumlov (Czech Republic) in 2022 and 2023 and a complete of two,000 workers had been employed. However demand ebbed away once more. On the one hand, the warehouses of wholesalers and installers are full, and alternatively, Europe’s photo voltaic trade is struggling massively from the dumping measures of its Chinese language opponents, says CEO Elisabeth Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß.

Declines since 2023

As reported, Fronius needed to cancel shifts as early as 2023 and let go of leased staff. An element-time mannequin was launched for 1,300 workers, which offered for the fee of a big a part of the wage with considerably lowered working hours. However even that was in the end not sufficient. The primary two quarters went a lot worse than hoped.

Now 350 workers have been knowledgeable that they are going to be laid off on July 1st. Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß says that from the present perspective, no additional layoffs ought to observe. “We’re satisfied of additional market progress in Austria and Europe and are assured that we can function profitably once more,” says the corporate boss. “Right this moment is a painful day for the corporate and for me personally. However sadly the measures taken thus far haven’t been sufficient; we now have to drastically scale back our personnel prices.”
A while in the past, Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß had identified in an interview with OÖNachrichten that Chinese language opponents had been flooding Europe with low-cost items to be able to achieve market share. Nonetheless, appeals to politicians had not borne fruit thus far.