Partners hope sun will shine on them

Adelaide Advertiser
6 September 2011, Page: 1

Solar Shop entrepreneur Adrian Ferraretto is taking on the influx of imported solar panels flooding Australian markets with his new Adelaide venture, Tindo Solar. The Mawson Lakes-based business will be South Australia's sole photovoltaic (PV) panel manufacturer and its only Australian competitor is publicly listed Silex Systems in Sydney. Panel production is due to start in late November following an $8 million investment. Mr Ferraretto, who is managing director of the privately owned company, has teamed up with another former Solar Shop name, Richard Inwood, along with senior adviser Russell Mourney and finance and production manager Ben Kerry.

Twenty ship containers bringing the company's new production plant from Korea are due in Adelaide during October. The team expects it will be producing about 250,000 panels annually with a workforce of 30 to 40. Mr Ferraretto, who resigned as Solar Shop's managing director in July last year after building the business to about 200 employees nationally, has sourced plant components from all over the world. "I took a week off and thought, "Now I'm going crazy'", he says.

The mechanical engineer revisited earlier plans to manufacture PV panels locally and visited plants around the world to research the new company's unique design. Tindo solar panels will incorporate German wafer, with the team saying this product is part of the highest output PV panel measured at the Desert Knowledge solar research site at Alice Springs. Each panel will also have its own inbuilt UK-made inverter, rather than following the usual PV set-up where several rooftop panels feed into a separate inverter. "We're estimating that these advantages are giving us an additional 10% output to the average of other panels", Mr Inwood, company people and business manager, says.

The panels also incorporate glass from France and a glue from a US company. "Some of the connections will be Australian. I'm hoping to get as much Aussie in it as we can", Mr Ferraretto says. He hopes the enterprise will also usher in other locally produced product, saying Pilkington has previously made solar panel glass in Australia and this venture could encourage a restart. Mr Ferraretto believes the company could make its panels for the same price as those imported from China and other countries.

He also says that while the solar industry faces challenges with government subsidies and feed-in tariffs being stopped or reduced, this will stabilise as the comparative cost of solar reaches parity. "(The solar industry) will be able to stand on its own two feet. I would say in the next 12 to 24 months it will hit that", he says. Companies will then be less affected by changing government policy. He compares the situation to Germany where there has been one solar scheme in place for 11 years-while Australian solar companies have had to manage 14 changes nationally over the same period.

"We have 500 MW of solar Australia-wide, Germany has 8000 MW and we have nearly twice the light", Mr Ferraretto says. Mr Inwood says Tindo-the Kaurna word for sun-Solar is pulling together a strong team, passionate about renewable energy. Mr Inwood established the rural regional program for Solar Shop in 2008, oversaw training and development and in January this year trained in the Al Gore climate change project held in Jakarta. "One of the things we want to do is work with people who are likeminded", he says.