COPEMISH ? Contractors Building Supply hosted a ribbon cutting ceremony for its solar panel assembly plant on Oct. 3 becoming the U.S. manufacturing facility for all Sonali Energees products.
About 60 people attended, including Dan Scripps from the Michigan Energy Innovation Business Council, Mike Worden, President of Honor Bank and Ron Bytwerk, Mayor of Copemish as well as Sonali CEO Pankaj Desai.
But the facility began operations on Sept. 16 when the first shipping container of solar cells arrived in Northern Michigan from India. Contractors Building Supply President Allan O?Shea said he has hired three people so far and hopes to have five new employees on staff by year?s end.
?It?s been a twelve-month effort to put together manufacturing in Michigan for solar products,? O?Shea said. ?Sonali supplies us with cell materials. We agreed to get Underwriters Laboratories approval to build them here. In May we got approved.?
O?Shea said his company is the only manufacturer of solar panels in Michigan. There were other Michigan solar companies before the most recent recession.
?There was a big push by the Chinese to bury the US in Chinese solar products during the recession,? O?Shea said. ?Many U.S. manufacturers also overspent on R&D and equipment. They couldn?t sustain it during the down times.?
O?Shea said he chose to build his business conservatively. But the key was finding the right partner that had the deep financial pockets and engineering excellence with which he could form a joint venture. Sonali provided to be that partner, he said.
?My philosophy is to bring jobs to our region one at a time,? he said. ?The days of creating two or three hundred jobs at a time is over. I have brought manufacturing back to Northern Michigan. Now we will be shipping internationally in the next year or two.?
