Saudi Arabia’s Bin Omairah to Up Solar Panel Exports to Europe, Africa

Saudi Arabia’s Bin Omairah Holding has planned to increase the export of its solar panels to capitalise on the expanding markets of Europe and Africa.

The exports will be done from the company’s factory operational in the Tabuk region. It has also been learnt that the company has plans to open another plant for solar panels within the next two or three years that will have twice as much production capacity.

The currently operational plant in Tabuk is known as Masdar Solar, which the company opened in November last year in north-western Saudi Arabia. This facility has a capacity of 150 MW.

Bin Omairah Holding has planned that its second production line will be commissioned by the middle of the present year to raise the panel output to 450 MW by the end of 2022. The information was shared by factory manager Mohammed bin Omairah.

The company says that when its new factory commences operations, it will have a capacity of 1.2 GW. At a construction cost of $186 million, this will be the largest solar panel factory in the Middle East and North Africa, claims the company.

As far as manufacturing solar panels is concerned, while glass and frames are procured from local markets, solar cells are imported from various international markets like Italy, Spain and China.

Solar panels manufactured at Masdar Solar are currently exported to Tunisia and Jordan. The company says that new markets in the Middle East and North America (MENA) region and Europe will be added this year.

Saudi Arabia has planned a modern city of Neom on the Red Sea, which is about 200km away from the Masdar plant. The latter will supply solar panels to Neom as well, according to Bin Omairah’s plans.

Besides, Saudi Arabia itself is a strong market as the government has planned to generate more than 15 TWh of renewable energy every year by 2024. In the present scheme of renewable energy, solar power constitutes about 92 per cent.