Fronius, a leading technology group based in Pettenbach, Upper Austria, has announced plans to lay off 350 of its 8,000 employees. The company cited the current solar crisis and “persistently weak sales in the Solar Energy business unit” as the reason for the layoffs.
In 2023, Fronius already canceled shifts and let go of leased workers. The company also introduced internal short-time work for 1,300 employees in solar production for 2024. However, despite these efforts, the situation worsened further due to the solar market’s failure to recover. CEO Elisabeth Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß hopes that the termination of these 350 employees will reduce personnel costs and prevent any further layoffs.
Initially, supply chain problems and the PV boom triggered by Russia’s war against Ukraine led to Fronius not being able to deliver as much as it had ordered. To address this issue, the company invested around 420 million euros in expanding production lines at Sattledt and Český Krumlov sites and hired around 2,000 new employees. However, despite this investment, warehouses of wholesalers and installers are fuller than expected with their stocks being reduced at a slower rate than anticipated. This has resulted in lower expansion of PV systems.
Fronius is facing challenges such as dumping prices from manufacturers in China that have flooded the European market with products below production costs. European politicians have yet to react decisively to these distortions of competition, which gives companies like Fronius a competitive disadvantage. Despite this challenge, Fronius had sales of around 1.6 billion euros in 2023 and employed around 8,000 people worldwide. The business is built on three pillars: solar energy accounts for around 60%, welding technology accounts for around 35%, and battery charging technology accounts for approximately 5%.
