By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened:Sources close to the situation have told SolarWakeup that Schletter, the German solar racking company going through insolvency (what bankruptcy is called in Germany) at home, is close to closing its U.S. operations.
SolarWakeup’s View: Though there has been no official announcement, multiple sources close to troubled racking company Schletter say the U.S. subsidiary has closed its doors. Calls to U.S. headquarters’ main number and to the marketing manager go directly to generic voicemail, and calls to the office and cell phones of the company’s vice president of sales reach recordings saying they have been disconnected.
A Google search for the company turns up the follow question being asked of the company and one reply by someone who describes themselves as a former employee:
It should be noted that with no WARN Act notices have been filed by the company.
The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 (the “WARN Act”) is a U.S. labor law which protects employees, their families, and communities by requiring most employers with 100 or more employees to provide 60 calendar-day advance notification of plant closings and mass layoffs of employees, as defined in the Act.
Schletter’s Germany parent company filed for bankruptcy in March.
Schletter US may well be another casualty in the needless and mindless trade war the Trump Administration had declared on the world, starting with his announcement of tariffs on solar modules in January and followed by tariffs on steel and aluminum, all of which would have had deleterious effects on Schletter’s main business.
The racking-and-mounting segment of the U.S. solar industry, of which Schletter USA was a part, spoke out as a group forcefully and often against the trade complaint brought by bankrupt solar module manufacturer Suniva and later joined by SolarWorld in an attempt to jack up their valuation in preparation for sale.
Last week, SunPower announced it had purchased SolarWorld’s assets, and Suniva’s main creditor SQN Capital Management announced it was selling off all the company’s manufacturing equipment. So neither of the two combatants of the idiotic tariff battle are likely to exist in six months.
But the effects of their ridiculous battle will be felt long into the future and, by all accounts, have claimed the employees of racking giant Schletter.
SolarWakeup will continue to monitor this situation and update the story as necessary.
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