Solar-power systems maker Amonix Inc. of Seal Beach has closed its North Las Vegas manufacturing plant about a year after launching the facility.
Amonix is a privately held company that makes concentrated photovoltaic solar-power panels for commercial use in the U.S. and abroad. Its 2011 revenue totaled an estimated $80 million.
Amonix cited “intense competition, the challenging solar-energy equipment pricing environment and lower-than-anticipated demand for concentrated photovoltaic solar energy” in Nevada and other southwestern states in announcing plans to “restructure the company and shut down its manufacturing center.”
The company still is in business and continues to work on its next generation of solar-panel systems at the Seal Beach facility, according to Vice President Charles Vaughan.
“The current plan is for Amonix to vacate the North Las Vegas factory by the first part of August,” Vaughan said.
News of the closure comes five months after the company laid off 200 workers at the Nevada facility, leaving about 100 employees, and closed the plant temporarily in anticipation of a new product line. The company had planned to get back to hiring in the summer.
“We looked at several options and were really hoping that we could keep the … facility, but it is not economically possible for Amonix at this time,” officials said.
Lay Offs
Amonix in May said it would lay off 76 workers in Orange County by the end of June, nearly halving its headquarters work force.
The $18 million, 214,000-square-foot facility in North Las Vegas was built last year with $12 million in private capital. The company received a $15.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2007.
The company also got a $15.6 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy in 2007 through its Solar America Initiative.
Amonix also has drawn investment dollars from the private sector over the past few years.
It raised $100 million last year in its latest round of fundraising, Chief Financial Officer Patrick McCullough told the Business Journal earlier this year. That followed a $129.4 million round in 2010, led by Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Earlier investments include a $25 million initial round of funding from New York-based Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and MissionPoint Capital Partners in Norwalk, Conn.
Other venture investors include Los Angeles-based Angeleno Group LLC, Menlo Park-based Westly Group and Chicago-based Adams Street Partners.
Amonix has been without a permanent chief executive since December when then-chief executive Brian Robertson was killed in an airplane accident.
Interim Chief
Kleiner Perkins in January appointed the firm’s partner Jan van Dokkum as interim chief executive of Amonix to succeed Robertson, but Van Dokkum isn’t currently listed as part of Amonix’s leadership team on the company’s website.
Amonix has been engaged in research for most of its history since it was established in 1989 with about 30 employees in Torrance. The company said it’s been just a few years since it went into commercializing its products and began attracting venture capital funds.
