In undertaking the acquisition, GT has attained Confluences HiCz Czochralski (CCz) growth technology which, says the company, is expected to help lower production costs.
The USD$80 million purchase price consists of USD$60 million in cash paid to Confluences shareholders, plus USD$20 million of cash earn-outs, which are payable upon the achievement of "certain financial and technical milestones through GTs FY13".
It is expected that the acquisition will become accretive in the second half of GTs 2013 financial year.
"This acquisition adds an innovative technology to GTs PV product portfolio that is well aligned with our strategy to rapidly innovate and develop next-generation crystal growth solutions," commented Tom Gutierrez, GT president and CEO.
He added that the "HiCz technology is expected to drive down the cost of monocrystalline wafers below traditional Czochralski methods while enabling flexible production of advanced materials used in next generation cell architectures."
GT says it expects to launch its commercial CCz mono equipment on the market in fiscal year 2013.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.