MENU
Three years ago, Swiss company Meyer Burger was on a high, building a factory to make solar cells and modules in Germany. Emerging from the Covid pandemic, the focus was on building sovereign technology capability in Europe to tackle the dominance of Chinese solar panel suppliers.
The company, founded in 1953 making equipment for watch makers, had pivoted in 2020 from making industrial equipment for solar panels to a more vertically integrated model, using the equipment itself to produce the panels. It owned key patents for HeteroJunction Technology (HJT) that formed the basis of its SmartWire technology for simpler, more reliable panels, and was setting up its own factories.
In the process it raised well over CHF880m, or nearly €1bn, from CHF700m in equity, €145m in convertible green bonds and selling several subsidiaries.
Ahead of the move, it had worked with solar panel maker REC on a leading-edge solar module. “As the leading premium and integrated non-Chinese solar panel manufacturer, and with its reputation for operational excellence, REC is the ideal partner to continue the commercialization of Meyer Burger’s high efficiency PV technologies,” said Hans Brändle, CEO of Meyer Burger at the time.
“Based on the successful production ramp-up of REC’s ALPHA solar module, we have now delivered the proof of concept of our leading technology,” said Dr. Remo Lütolf, the Chairman of the Board of Directors at the time who was ousted in a bruising boardroom battle with activist shareholders Sentis Capital and Elysium Capital.
“This technology is setting a new benchmark with respect to efficiency and production costs. Against this backdrop, we decided to undertake a strategic realignment of Meyer Burger. In other words, we are focusing on the marketing and development of our own heterojunction/SmartWire technology as well as the highly promising tandem cell technology – a combination of heterojunction and cheaper perovskite materials,” said Lütolf.
“This modified business strategy with increased vertical integration will allow us to profit more from value creation associated with our heterojunction/SmartWire technology. The focus is on setting up our own cell and module production in Europe. We are aiming to thereby exploit the full potential of our heterojunction/SmartWire technology while maintaining our technological lead and protecting our intellectual property against abuse.”
Brändle resigned, to be replaced by chief operating officer and chief technology officer Gunter Erfurt. He and the board sold off parts of the company that developed software automation, plasma equipment maker Muegge and 3D printing technologies to provide funds for the change.
However it was not a smooth transition. In 2021 the company fell out with partners and customers, including REC and Oxford PV, a spinout of the University of Oxford that was using the manufacturing equipment for its own tandem cells.
“Meyer Burger’s assessment was and is that the perovskite tandem technology will only reach the required technology and process maturity, product reliability and cost structure for competitive mass production in a few years. Any consequences of Oxford PV’s announcement therefore have no impact on the success of Meyer Burger’s transformation nor on Meyer Burger’s communicated guidance,” said the company.
Oxford PV has since commercialised a process for building solar cells that use a perovskite layer on a silicon solar cell substrate to boost the efficiency. The solar cells and modules are built in Brandenburg, Germany, and the company says it is pursuing expansion into high-volume manufacturing.
By 2024, Meyer Burger had operations in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium and Italy, and a factory acquired from SolarWorld. Its products had also been approved for sale in the UK and Australia, supported by around 50 wholesalers and more than 1,000 registered installers. As part of its technology-sovereignty strategy, it had strengthened the resilience of its materials supply chain through contracts with two Norwegian suppliers for high-quality silicon wafers with a low CO2 footprint.
But it had introduced new technology with a product platform based on glass-glass modules that are largely equivalent to the current glass-foil modules in terms of weight, dimensions and appearance. These future modules had a higher lifetime and reduced complexity in manufacturing, logistics and research and development.
Meyer Burger looked to the US and the funds from the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to save it. A plant in Goodyear, Arizona, was boosting capacity to around 2GW, funded by down payments from two new long-term offtake agreements starting in 2025.
New production technologies and equipment are already used in the expansion to approximately 3.4 GW of annual capacity. The switch to the larger wafer format for solar farms using modules with back-contact cells showed a longer lifetime.
That was not enough, but it did create an opportunity for someone else. In March 2026, the company’s assets were bought by US startup Swift Solar. The US solar panel industry has also struggled in the face of Chinese overproduction of solar panels so Swift Solar started in 2017 to commercialise perovskite technology.
The perovskite solar panel market (Source: IDtechEx)
“As manufacturers scale up, it is becoming clear that the perovskite PV market is not monolithic,” said Dr Xiaoxi He, Principal Research Associate, in her latest report from IDTechEx. “Different regions are demonstrating distinct technological and commercial preferences based on their domestic energy policies, existing manufacturing infrastructure & supply chains, and geographic constraints. While some regions are heavily prioritizing perovskite-silicon tandem PVs to maximize utility-scale power density, others are focusing investments on flexible perovskite and single-junction perovskite modules to unlock localized, building-integrated manufacturing.”
“We spent years figuring out if perovskites could work at scale, pushing boundaries in the lab, and trying to convince sceptical investors who previously burned their hands on thin-film solar that this time around, the physics was actually different,” said Joel Jean, CEO and co-founder of Swift Solar. He set up Swift with colleagues from MIT, Stanford and Oxford University.
The acquisition of the Meyer Burger HJT manufacturing equipment, global IP portfolio, and team of manufacturing veterans, equipment engineers, and silicon experts, led by the former CEO Erfurt and Marcel Koenig, the former Global Head of R&D, is intended to drive gigawatt-scale solar manufacturing in the US. However the factories in Germany and the US were not part of the deal.
“With AI data centres, electrification, and re-industrialization, we need fundamentally better solar technology,” said Jean.
“Today’s silicon solar cells are approaching a hard ceiling on efficiency around 30%. Our perovskite-silicon tandem technology breaks through that ceiling by stacking a new semiconductor on top of silicon to capture light that silicon wastes,” he said. “Swift has spent years figuring out how to make it real. It hinges on HJT: a proven, high-efficiency silicon cell technology.”
“We’re combining German silicon manufacturing expertise with American perovskite technology leadership to build a company that can deliver not just one generation of solar technology, but many generations to follow.”
‍Oxford PV is also not ignoring the US market with its tandem perovskite technology. In February 2026 it signed a patent licensing deal with First Solar, a direct competitor to Swift Solar.
The non-exclusive deal covers existing issued patents and currently pending patent applications and allows First Solar to continue its development of perovskite technology. The company bills itself as the largest solar manufacturer in the Western Hemisphere and the world’s largest producer of thin film solar technology.
“This agreement allows us to continue pursuing viable pathways to manufacturing and commercializing thin film-perovskite products that could meet our long-term goal of serving all addressable markets,” said Mark Widmar, chief executive officer, First Solar. “This agreement reflects the confidence we have in our R&D team’s progress in developing an efficient, stable, and manufacturable perovskite device, while aligning with our longstanding positions on respecting and safeguarding intellectual property rights.”  
First Solar has spent over $2 billion on thin film research and development, which includes a focus on perovskites and a new perovskite development line at its Perrysburg, Ohio, campus that produces small form-factor modules featuring a perovskite semiconductor. It has five operational manufacturing facilities in Alabama, Louisiana, and Ohio, and a sixth plant under construction in South Carolina, which is expected to begin operation later in 2026.
The new South Carolina facility is expected to increase First Solar’s capacity to produce American-made solar technology by 3.7 gigawatts (GW), aiming for 18 GW of annual capacity in 2027.
That highlights that Swift Solar is likely to come up against the same Oxford PV patents, given the background of the founders at the same university, while Meyer Burger came from the equipment side rather than the cell chemistry or technology approach.
At the time there is a strong capability in Europe for organic photovoltaic (OPV) technology. This is more flexible and cheaper to produce by using a roll-to-roll process. Heliatek in Dresden, Germany, for example recently covering three towers at a BMW plant in Dingolfing, Germany.
Heliatek OPV panels at BMW (Source: Heliatek)
Epishine in Sweden is also using roll-to-roll OPV technology for indoor solar cells, while Dracula Technologies in France has developed 3D printing technology that can produce both the OPV solar cell and a battery for indoor sensors. At the same time Meyer Burger was building its plant in Germany, Dracula was building a huge plant in France for the technology.
Under pressure from activist shareholders, Meyer Burger bet on demand for European manufactured solar panels. Support, and customers, never materialised, and three plants in Germany and the US paid the price. As a result leading edge European technology and expertise ends up in the US.
In an historic twist, that sets up a potential battle between Swift Solar and Meyer Burger’s former partner Oxford PV and US partner First Solar.
All material on this site Copyright © 2026 European Business Press SA. All rights reserved.

source