Less than three months after Schletter started its financial recovery process, by which investors were invited to get onboard, the company reports that contracts with Golden Square Capital have been inked. Reportedly, the acquisition financing company, Avenue Capital Group is behind the deal. Additionally, the management members of Schletter made investments into the company. Following the closing of the contracts and investments, the financial recovery is now completed, the company says. All business locations are going to be retained the announcement further clarified.
According to Schletter, the new investor provides a two-digit € million figure for direct investments into business operations. The funds ought to be used to foster Schletter’s product development, as well as improving its market presence in Asia and America. “The investor solution enables us to improve our potential together with resourceful partners and uncuffed from financial dead wood,” explains Tom Graf, CEO of Schletter.
In March, Schletter filed for insolvency under self-administration, with the aim of financially recovering. For this purpose, the company looked for investors globally. “The investors where particularly convinced of the future concept of the management team, which seamlessly adds to the operative restructuring that has been done in the past two years,” the CEO says after the successful closure.
The new associates are counting on continuity. This includes the continuation of the entire business group, including all subsidiaries and operative sites. Furthermore, the new investors explicitly said that they want the German manufacturing sites to continue operating.
“Even though the growth is taking place in different markets at the moment, the production facility in Kirchdorf, Germany remains important, to be able to produce close to European customers,” highlights Graf. “The premise is however, that we are getting thinner and more efficient in Germany.”
This statement hints of a planned downsizing. Accordingly, the staff size should be reduced from 230 to 140 workers at the Kirchdorf location. The employees have already been notified and in the next days talks with the board members will be held.
The 67,000m² property in Kirchdorf has been sold to a local investor. Schletter will be renting parts of the property in the future.
Meanwhile, Schletter’s U.S. subsidiary also commenced insolvency proceedings. Similarly, the production facility is going to be retained, though Schletter has not disclosed any details about the conditions, yet. The focus for future business operation will be on PV mounting systems, which are developed and produced by Schletter itself.
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.