REC investing additional $485 million

OSLO, Norway — Renewable Energy Corporation, or REC, is investing more money in the United States and Norway.

The corporation decided to invest $485 million to create an additional 9,000 metric tons of silane and 6,000 metric tons of polysilicon capacity in the United States from the beginning of 2010, the company announced today. It is investing 200 million in Norwegian krone in additional megawatt wafer capacity in Glomfjord, Norway.

As a result of these capacity increases, the annual production capacity for REC Silicon is expected to be about 29,000 metric tons of silane gas and 19,500 metric tons of polysilicon in 2010.

The new silane gas facility will be built as a "blueprint" of the silane unit already under construction at REC's plant in Moses Lake.

REC Silicon CEO Goran Bye said the company will invest in de-bottlenecking the Siemens reactors in its plant in Butte, Mont., reducing costs at the plant by 15 percent.

"We will invest in Moses Lake in order to utilize the new plant we are building even further," Bye added.

The company has yet to determine where it will build the new silane unit, which is approximately half the new expansion, he said.

"It will be either in Moses Lake or in Butte," Bye said.

Bye said the expansion means the company will be able to produce even more in Moses Lake, and probably bring on about 20 new jobs in addition to those 80 jobs already anticipated with the $600 million expansion announced last year.

"For REC Silicon, it means we will probably be the second-largest producer of polysilicon in 2010, instead of the third-largest as we are today," he said. "The main thing is, we will make the Butte plant very cost-competitive by this investment. It probably means more for employment in Butte, Mont., than it does in Moses Lake."