Austrian inverter manufacturer Fronius has cut another 650 jobs due to high inverter inventories and the lack of an expected recovery.
The solar energy sector achieved record growth in 2023, with an additional 2.6 GW in Austria, 56 GW in Europe and almost 450 GW worldwide. Many companies, including Austrian inverter and storage system manufacturer Fronius, responded by increasing capacity and hiring new workers.
However, in recent months there has been no exponential growth in demand, and at the end of last year Fronius started to doubt its positive market assessment due to order cancellations. The company responded by introducing internal short-time work for PV manufacturing employees, moving approximately 1,300 employees to a self-paid, part-time model.
Fronius assumed that inventories would disappear by the end of the second quarter, but this did not happen and order intake forecasts had to be revised downwards. As a result, the photovoltaic division laid off 350 employees in early June.
Market analysis by the new management of the solar energy business unit resulted in the dismissal of another 650 employees a few weeks later. Fronius explained that evaluations and discussions with international wholesalers showed a much lower order volume for 2024 and sufficient availability of inverters in the warehouses until 2025.
The new layoffs affect 450 employees in Austria and 200 employees in foreign subsidiaries, mainly in the Czech Republic and Germany. Fronius plans to almost completely end the internal working time reduction in September. With the switch from three to two shifts, employees, especially in production, will be fully deployed again. The company also plans to save on investments and material costs.
Fronius has laid off about half of the workers it hired during the natural gas and energy crisis. CEO Elisabeth Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß explained that the “redimensioning of our business activities” is “unfortunately necessary and unavoidable”.
Despite the challenges, she remains optimistic about the future. Fronius has increased its market share in key markets such as Austria and Germany and maintained its market share in Switzerland and Australia.
“Fronius is one of the best-known inverter brands in the world and the alternative to Chinese manufacturers,” says Engelbrechtsmüller-Strauß. “Fronius remains financially independent and has several pillars: with welding technology and battery charging technology, in addition to solar technology, we have two business units from completely different fields that offer us stability and security.”
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