The industry will no doubt continue to see short-term fluctuations in demand, and what REC can influence is how we work to continuously lower our costs and improve the quality of our products while strengthening our market position across the value chain.
Our focus in 2010 has been to develop the REC organization, including comprehensive training of the entire organization as well as strengthening the leadership at all of our sites. In this area we have taken some big steps in the right direction in 2010, and seeing this makes me really happy. Our results are still not consistent enough, and I look forward to seeing the benefits of the work we have done to solidify our organization in 2010 materialize and give results in 2011.
Two of the highlights in 2010 were celebrating the openings of the expansions in Moses Lake and the new facility in Singapore. Both events marked significant achievements for REC and all of the employees who have contributed to thesuccessful completion of the projects. The celebrations were also important profiling events, exhibiting REC to the outside world. The feedback from our external stakeholders has been overwhelming, and many have told us that experiencing the openings and seeing the new plants exceeded even high expectations.
As new capacity has come on stream, we have also focused on building a sales organization and market position to bring our products to the market. We now have a global sales footprint and are continuously working to strengthen our market presence through our partner network. Our module was recognized as a top performer by Photon magazine’s independent comparative field study and the REC Peak Energy module won the Solar Industry Award for Module Manufacturing Innovation given by industry leaders.
With having successfully completed billion-sized expansion and construction projects, and turned them into fully operational production units from whichsolar products are shipped steadily to customers worldwide, I believe we are well positioned for 2011. It is now up to us to deliver and capture the full potential of the plants and the equipment that we have made such an effort to build.
During 2010, we had to make the difficult decision of closing the plant in Glava, Sweden. I would like to express my gratitude to the employees in Glava. I am truly impressed by the quality of the organization, giving a top performance even in the final days of production.
The REC Business System (RBS) has been introduced and gradually implemented throughout REC. The RBS methodology is the way we are going to work to succeed with our ambition of being the preferred solar partner for our customers and keeping a competitive edge in this industry. Building and strengthening the local organizations is key, as we want decisions to be made as close to the line as possible. Several parts of our business are currently trending well and we have started to harvest the fruits of some of the hard work that has been laid down. It is no time to get complacent, of course. There are many challenges ahead of us and great room for improvement still.
The solar market is on a strong long-term growth trend, with continued room to build and create value for our shareholders. As part of our ongoing RBS work, we expect to continue to increase the production and identify opportunities for operational improvements. At the same time, we have started preparing for our next significant expansion based on our FluidizedBed Reactor (FBR) technology. As communicated in Singapore last November, we will need to deliver on operational and financial targets to form a basis for further expansion. As the cost pressure in the industry is expected to continue, we also need to be confident that potential expansions will have an even better competitive position than our current plants.
REC will continue to develop high efficiency solar products in an ambition to respond to the need for sustainable energy solutions. With a solid organization across the solar value chain in place, our strong growth in the polysilicon segment based on proprietary technology and our fully automated plants delivering very promising results, I believe REC is well positioned to contribute to meeting the growing need for clean, renewable energy in the years to come.
Ole Enger
CEO & President