The company has said that it has taken the decision as it plans to focus its operations at larger scale plants in lowest cost manufacturing countries, in order to drive down the cost of solar power for consumers.
The BP Solar sales and marketing team in Australia will continue their activities, and aim to grow the sales and servicing of solar products.
Reyad Fezzani, global CEO of BP Solar, said: The challenge for solar power is to reduce its costs to the level at which it competes on an equal footing with conventional electricity delivered through the power grid. To do this we need to expand at scale and reduce costs. We’ve looked at all options in our Sydney manufacturing site and the physical location, lack of expansion potential and lease agreements just don’t make it competitive: the most modern Solar PV manufacturing plants are up to 20 times larger than our Sydney site and we are competing in this global market.
Fezzani has said that globally, BP was investing around $1.5 billion per year in alternative energy, building material, focussed, low carbon energy businesses. BP Solar is a material part of BP’s Alternative Energy portfolio.
