Evergreen Solar and Jiawei Solar hold ceremonial groundbreaking at Wuhan plant

MARLBORO, USA & WUHAN, CHINA: In a ceremony at Wuhan, China, Evergreen Solar Inc., a manufacturer of String Ribbon solar power products with its proprietary, low-cost silicon wafer technology, and its contract manufacturing partner, Jiawei Solarchina Co., celebrated the groundbreaking for their new 100 megawatt manufacturing plants.

Evergreen Solar Chairman, President and CEO Richard M. Feldt was joined by Qing-Quan Lo, Hubei Province party leader; Hong-Zhong Li, Governor of Hubei Province; Song Yang, Wuhan City party leader; Chen-Fa Ruan, Wuhan City Mayor and other high ranking government officials as well as Professor Ding Kongxian, chairman of Jiawei Solarchina Co., Ltd., and senior management from Jiawei and the Hubei Science & Technology Investment Co. for the ceremony celebrating the start of the plant’s construction, which actually began in July of 2009. Construction is on schedule to be completed by spring 2010.

These manufacturing plants are part of an agreement between Evergreen Solar and Jiawei through which Evergreen Solar will manufacture String Ribbon wafers using its state-of-the-art Quad furnaces at this leased facility being built on Jiawei’s campus. Jiawei will convert the String Ribbon wafers into Evergreen Solar-branded panels on a contract manufacturing basis.

"Today represents an important step in the growth of Evergreen Solar," said Feldt. "When you combine Evergreen Solar’s unique wafer technology and Jiawei’s high quality, cost efficient cell and panel conversion processes, we believe we have a winning formula that will produce the best performing and lowest cost multi-crystalline solar panels in the world.

"We’re extremely pleased that construction proceeds according to schedule and look forward to beginning production of our String Ribbon solar panels in the spring of 2010."