Morgan Solar secures $4.7 million investment; to manufacture Sun Simba HCPV

TORONTO, CANADA: Morgan Solar Inc., a Toronto based solar energy start-up, completed the first part of its Round A investment, securing $4.7 Million from Iberdrola Group SA, Nypro Inc, and Turnstone Capital Management LLC. Morgan

Solar has developed a breakthrough concentrated solar photovoltaic (CPV) panel called the Sun Simba HCPV, a high efficiency, low cost solar technology designed for utility scale and large distributed generation applications. Morgan Solar has spent the last two years designing, testing and refining a technology that is poised to make a major impact in the solar energy industry.

John Paul Morgan, Chief Technology Officer at Morgan Solar and inventor of the proprietary optics technology, acknowledges the investment's significance: "Iberdrola Group is the biggest possible industry partner we could have, and Nypro are global experts in the manufacturing processes we use. That these companies got in early with us makes me realize how big this could be."

A syndicate led by Turnstone Capital Management LLC and including Inversiones Financieras Perseo SL, the venture initiative of Iberdrola Group and New Ventures Group LLC the venture investment subsidiary of Nypro Inc will fund Morgan Solar's migration from research and development to manufacturing. The first tranche of this first investment round is now closed and an additional investment tranche will close soon.

The investors offer Morgan Solar considerably more than just the dollars needed to ramp up manufacturing. Two of the investors, Iberdrola Group and Nypro, now also have a strategic interest in the future success of Morgan Solar.

Iberdrola Group, the largest electrical utility in Spain, one of the five largest electrical utilities in the world and the world's largest investor in renewable energy has taken an early stake in the company by investing USD $2.5 million.

Pedro Velasco, Director of Non-Energy Businesses at Iberdrola Group, said: "Iberdrola's venture initiative, Inversiones Financieras Perseo SL, is specifically dedicated to investing in early stage, paradigm changing renewable energy technologies that appear to have a very high success potential. We have reviewed hundreds of investment opportunities over the last few years and only invested in Morgan Solar and four others. Their CPV technology is revolutionary, highly efficient and simple to manufacture at very low costs. We see a winner in the making and we took a position as soon as we saw it."

Similarly, Nypro Inc, a global leader in precision injection molding and contract manufacturing with operations in 16 countries in the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific, offers a further strategic advantage in addition to capital.

Nypro has invested $1.0 million and becomes a key partner in the manufacturing and product assembly by providing the capacity to quickly scale up manufacturing of the Sun Simba HCPV globally.

Michael Fallon, VP/GM of New Ventures Group at Nypro Inc., said: "Nypro is constantly looking for innovations that have the potential to dramatically change an industry, while presenting synergies with our core strengths in injection molding and contract manufacturing around the world. We wanted to enter the solar energy market and we were looking for a next generation technology when we found Morgan Solar."

Turnstone Capital Management LLC led the formation of the investment syndicate. Marc La Magna, Managing Director at Turnstone Capital, commented: "We're very pleased to have found and invested in Morgan Solar, and believe the company's technology is a fundamental leap forward in exploiting solar energy effectively. Our views of Morgan Solar's business model and approach to manufacturing highly efficient solar solutions at competitive cost were quickly validated by our co-investors Iberdrola and Nypro. We look forward to supporting Morgan Solar's corporate development as it strives to make a significant impact on the PV market in the years to come."

Morgan Solar is now putting together a pilot manufacturing facility to build the Sun Simba HCPV. Their plan is to deploy demonstration and evaluation installations soon, while fine tuning the manufacturing processes and moving toward commercial release in late 2010.