German solar company Adler Solar Services has expanded its offering to European importers with the opening of a combined warehouse and services center at its Bremen base.
Although the lion's share of European panel imports pass through Rotterdam, along the North Sea coast, Adler Solar claims its new 5,000 sq m facility offers superior performance testing on site, thanks to the center's AAA flasher and electroluminescence imaging.
"Although there are mobile testing facilities which importers to other destinations can use, mobile companies do not have a triple-A flasher," Adler Solar's media spokesman Claas Rohmeyer told pv magazine. "We can offer optimal testing services in the same location as our storage warehouse."
The new storage facility, which opened at the end of October, revives a practice which had fallen into disuse in Bremen in recent years by offering a storage space outside the European customs area.
Importing companies can have modules shipped to Adler's facility and then arrange the paperwork to import the goods into the EU as well as performance testing the modules before moving them on to their final destinations.
Rohmeyer stressed however, that it is the responsibility of Adler's clients to ensure the legality of the goods, for example by establishing the true origins of panels amid fears Chinese companies will attempt to pass off their modules as manufactured in third-party countries to get around last year's anti-dumping and anti-subsidy minimum price agreement with the EU.
Adler Solar, which has offered solar testing, repair, operations and maintenance, engineering and system optimization services to companies such as BP Solar, REC and First Solar since 2007, is hoping to expand its warehouse-and-testing model if it proves a success.
"We have started with a 5,000 sq m facility," added Rohmeyer, "but we will look to expand that into a bigger storage space if we see a successful business there."
Adler Solar claims to have processed 3 million solar modules for customers in seven years.
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