pv magazine: The move of First Solar in publicly recognizing its long-standing partnership with Von Ardenne appears to be a reflection of a number of years of fruitful collaboration. But what does it mean for Von Ardenne? Thomas Böcke: It is truly an exciting day and we are very proud. For multiple years we have been in business with First Solar and it had already acknowledged the contribution to its success in terms of efficiency and also productivity for a long time, but had never made it public. Since yesterday, everybody that had a suspicion about First Solar's equipment suppliers now have the confirmation that it is Von Ardenne. So truly our quality, our ability for execution and our innovation helped First Solar to be where it is today.Also for Von Ardenne it is a commitment to the future, because we continue supporting the customer well into the future. And we are more than willing to do that. First Solar is adding capacity, not in new facilities but in existing fabs. What does that mean from Von Ardenne? Adding capacity can be done by increasing overall line capacity or putting new lines in. First Solar did invest in Ohio and we contributed to that. In general, Von Ardenne supports its customers besides the pure replication business with multiple kinds of upgrades, which help to further improve the productivity and efficiency of the production lines. I think ...Den vollständigen Artikel lesen ...