This is a bit of a shock in the French photovoltaic industry. The Chinese DAS Solar announced the acquisition of an industrial wasteland in the town of Mandeure, near Montbéliard (Doubs), with the intention of constructing a building there which will house three photovoltaic panel assembly lines. All for a capacity of three gigawatts from June 2025, against 109 million euros of investment.
The creation of a factory in Europe is “ driven by the European Union's demand for a share of European manufacturing » in this area, said Shi Si, vice-president of DAS Solar, during a press briefing reported by AFP.
Currently, 90% of the world's production of photovoltaic panels comes from Asia. But Europe established in 2023 the Net Zero Industry Act, or NZIA directive. This sets ambitious objectives, including the production in Europe of 40% of photovoltaic panels installed on the continent from 2030.
« Is it with a project like this that we are going to ensure our energy sovereignty? », quips anonymously but acidly a player in the sector. Indeed, if this announcement will generate the local creation of 450 to 600 jobs, the components should come mainly from the Chinese partners of the company born only in 2018. It already has 14 factories in China with a workforce of 8,900 employees and a capacity cumulative 55 GW of annual production. In this context, time is running out for French market manufacturers. For some, it's already too late…
“With cheap Chinese solar panels, solar energy is becoming competitive. Unlike the United States, Europe has not protected itself at all by not raising its customs duties on this technology. I therefore believe that on photovoltaics, we have lost the battle and that it will be very difficult to get back into the race without a technological breakthrough”, concludes a major French boss who has invested a lot in this issue and who is showing himself skeptical about the future of these French gigafactories.
These mega-factories must secure their financing
A position that is not to the taste of Carbon, a Lyon start-up which is preparing a gigafactory for the production of photovoltaic panels in Fos-sur-Mer (Boûches-du-Rhône). “ Our first objective is to compensate for this Chinese dependence. In the short term, our ambition is not to lead a technological breakthrough. But we are going to create an R&D center near Istres and we are committed to investing 3% of our turnover each year in R&D. We have a five-year roadmap to achieve technological breakthroughs », positions itself Nicolas Chandellier, the general director of the start-up which aims to found a European sector for manufacturing photovoltaic panels.
The young company, whose founders have already injected around twenty million euros into the project, has the ambition to integrate all the phases of manufacturing a panel, namely the purchase of silicon from European producers, the transformation of these polysilicon plates into photovoltaic cells and the assembly of the latter with glass plates, before bringing everything together in an aluminum structure.
“We are within the envisaged transition times, on the administrative level, for the gigafactory, in Fos-sur-Mer (…) We should obtain the building permit by the end of January 2025 and start the construction in the following weeks. The end of the project will then take place at the end of 2026 and production should start in 2027,” lists the general director of Carbon.
Barnier exempts industrial projects from zero net artificialization (ZAN)
Carbon plans the production, over 250,000 square meters, of five gigawatts of photovoltaic panels, against a final investment estimated at 1.7 billion euros. This amount should be ensured 50% by debt, 25% by subsidies and the same amount by equity. In the meantime, the funding round currently being finalized (around 30 million euros) should provide Carbon with financing for the start of construction on its gigafactory, but above all with financing for Carbon One, its pilot factory.
In this sense, Carbon was to complete the purchase by the end of 2024 of the Photowatt factory from EDF Renewables, a loss-making company for years but a pioneer in the French production of photovoltaic panels. Ultimately, this project just fell apart between technical setbacks and a hostile social climate towards the young company.
Carbon gives up buying Photowatt from EDF: the underside of a turnaround
“We have no particular concerns about finding an alternative site before the end of the first quarter of 2025,” comments Nicolas Chandellier.
Further north, in Moselle, HoloSolis presents itself as a competitor to Carbon, with an industrial project with similar figures and essentially identical ambitions. Highly anticipated in this department, in Hambach, the industrial project carried out by Holosolis will concern 180,000 covered square meters, where ultimately 1,800 employees will be working, from the end of 2026, all against a total investment of 850 million euros. “ The first production tranche of 1.7 gigawatts will be operational at the end of 2026 ”, had informed The Bertrand Lecacheux Tribune, the director of operations of HoloSolis, in September. Ultimately, the Hambach factory will produce 10 million photovoltaic panels each year, the equivalent of five gigawatts. This volume would correspond more or less to 8% of Chinese imports into Europe in 2022.
HoloSolis wants to build its photovoltaic panel gigafactory in less than a year
HoloSolis therefore “only” has to secure the financing of its gigafactory to calmly take the path to this promising market. The entity must also complete fundraising in the coming weeks, but it has recently attracted four industrialists via a million euros investment in convertible bonds.
13.2 GW of production on French soil in the long term?
While waiting for these new production capacities, France must rely on the good form displayed by the Reden Solar group, which has just invested 4.5 million euros in a new assembly line for photovoltaic panels, Roquefort, in the suburbs of Agen. For an investment of 4.5 million euros, this industrial tool is capable of assembling up to 12,000 photovoltaic cells per hour, or 300,000 photovoltaic panels each year.
[Reden a modernisé son outil industriel historique (Crédits : Rémi Benoit).]
“We choose our raw materials and our components and we assemble them here, a bit like what Renault does in the automobile industry. We do not cut corners on quality, we have certain requirements (…) We are almost 70% more expensive than a Chinese photovoltaic panel”comments Tony Proutier, operations director of Reden Solar and collaborator since the start of the adventure in 2008.
Photovoltaics: Agen-based SME Reden Solar bought for 2.5 billion euros
This investment, which will generate 12 jobs and add to the 250 existing on site, will allow Reden Solar to meet its strong needs, which is above all a producer of solar energy and not a manufacturer of photovoltaic panels.
“In addition to integrating the latest technologies linked to our market, this new line allows us to produce panels of specific sizes in small series (…) We assemble with our specificities and not standard products and we must respond to our growth (…) Over the last few years, we have seen growth in our annual activity of +20%,” explains Frank Demaille, its CEO since last July.
Although the company does not, however, wish to communicate its turnover, Reden Solar currently has one gigawatt in service and ten times more are in the pipeline according to data communicated by the company. “ With this new line, we can produce up to 200 megawatts of photovoltaic panels. But my goal is to develop 1,000 megawatts of installations each year. I would be delighted to be able to supply myself in Europe, I told HoloSolis », continues the CEO of Reden, 70% of the components of its photovoltaic panels come from Europe.
[Le nouveau bâtiment de Reden Solar est en capacité d’accueillir deux lignes d’assemblages supplémentaires (Crédits : Rémi Benoit).]
The four factories and projects combined (Reden Solar, HoloSolis, Carbon and Das Solar), offer France, on its territory, a production capacity of 13.2 GW each year, ultimately. Which corresponds to the ambitions of the reindustrialization plan dedicated to the photovoltaic industry presented last April, for which France is targeting 10 GW by 2030, with several levers (the green industries tax credit (C3IV) or calls offers). A plan that the Court of Auditors nevertheless considers “ weakened by international competition » in its latest report on the last decade of French industrial policy.
