Kyocera Corporation announced that it is increasing its solar module production capacity with the start of construction of its second plant in Kadan, Czech Republic, and the completion of an expanded assembly plant in Tianjin, China.

Following the rapid growth of the solar market in recent years, Kyocera has been continually increasing the production capacity of its cell and module manufacturing facilities across the globe.

Kyocera recently started construction of its second solar module assembly plant in the Czech Republic. The new facility is set to be completed in fall 2011 and will have an annual capacity of 360MW, combining with the existing Czech plant for a total of 560MW per year-- the largest solar module assembly site in the Kyocera Group. The new plant will be built near the company’s existing Czech plant (est. 2005) which has been supplying solar modules to Europe — the world’s largest market for solar energy. The existing plant has already supplied the company’s high-quality modules for various large-scale projects, including a total of 53.1MW for three solar power plants in Spain.

In 2003, the company’s original Tianjin solar module plant was the first solar module production facility to be established by a Japanese company in China. Operations from the existing plant will be gradually transferred to the new, expanded plant by spring of this year. Once the facility is fully operational, it will have an annual production capacity of 360-megawatts (MW) — approximately 3.5 times more than the site’s current capacity.

The new plants in Europe and Asia combine with the company’s other existing module assembly plants in Japan, Mexico and the U.S. to help meet Kyocera’s annual production target of 1-gigawatt (GW) by FY2013 (ending March 31, 2013). By expanding its production capacity, Kyocera will continue to supply highly reliable solar modules to meet the growing global demand for solar energy.

“Kyocera aims to differentiate itself in the growing solar market through the high performance and high reliability of our products,” stated Tetsuo Kuba, president of Kyocera Corporation. “By utilizing our strengths in manufacturing technology and expanding our global production capacity, we will continue to aggressively develop our solar business.”