The factory I work at will stop making solar panels next month.
We've been aggressively automating and putting robots everywhere. What once took hundreds of workers working 24/7 now takes dozens. The labour cost per panel dropped to almost nothing.
But now the market price is so low that we can't compete with the equally-roboticized factories in lower-cost geographies.
Next month, we're shutting down the machines and shipping them over to our sister site in Thailand.
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We've been aggressively automating and putting robots everywhere. What once took hundreds of workers working 24/7 now takes dozens. The labour cost per panel dropped to almost nothing.
But now the market price is so low that we can't compete with the equally-roboticized factories in lower-cost geographies.
Next month, we're shutting down the machines and shipping them over to our sister site in Thailand.