Spire Corp., a company providing turnkey solar factories and capital equipment to manufacture photovoltaic modules, has expanded into an additional 53,000 square feet of solar equipment manufacturing space at its Bedford, Mass., headquarters facility. The company now maintains a total of approximately 144,000 square feet of manufacturing and headquarters space at this location.
'Spire's solar capital equipment business is benefiting from the confluence of two powerful market forces,’ says Roger G. Little, Spire's chairman and CEO. ‘Global demand for solar power is accelerating, and manufacturers of photovoltaic wafers, cells and modules anticipate greater availability of solar-grade silicon. They want to have new factory capacity in place to take advantage of these market forces, which is creating unprecedented new requirements for solar capital equipment.’
Along with increasing its manufacturing capacity, Spire has nearly doubled its staff to more than 205 in its Bedford facility, including contract assembly workers. ‘We have increased the number of employees in our engineering, manufacturing and purchasing functions, established a second shift for manufacturing, and substantially added to our post-sale service staff and capabilities,’ says Rodger W. LaFavre, chief operating officer of Spire.
