In Hillsboro in the US federal state of Oregon SolarWorld AG is beginning to establish an integrated solar silicon wafer and solar cell production which will reach a capacity of 500 MW until the year  2009 thus at the same time building the largest solar factory on the American continent. At a price of only 30 million EUR the solar technology group succeeded in taking over the silicon wafer production of the Japanese Komatsu Group which had invested some 600 million EUR at the Hillsboro location – in the immediate vicinity of the world’s largest factory of the chip manufacturer Intel – but had never gone into production with the new facility due to a weak demand situation in the chip industry. The SolarWorld Group will further develop the new site with an investment of 300 million EUR. The federal state of Oregon will support these investments with funds from its Anti-Global-Warming-Program. Following this acquisition the SolarWorld Group will shift its solar crystallization activities from Vancouver to Hillsboro and already start up production in the summer of 2007. In the first stage of the expansion capacities will be enhanced to 100 MW. At the same time the group will double the capacities of its specialized solar module factory at the Camarillo/California production site to 100 MW.