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Amonix Plans Layoffs at Seal Beach Headquarters

Solar panels maker Amonix Inc. is planning to lay off 76 employees at its headquarters in Seal Beach.

The company has about 160 workers there, where it handles design and engineering for the solar panels it makes to generate electricity.

Amonix executives did not return calls for comment on the round of layoffs or the outlook for its Nevada operation.

The layoffs are the latest locally and nationally for the clean-energy industry, which has drawn big investments from the public and private sectors in recent years.

Fremont-based cylindrical panels maker Solyndra LLC has been the poster child for clean-energy skeptics. The company filed for bankruptcy last September after getting $535 million in federal loan guarantees.

Fisker

Some other clean-technology companies with government backing have gone bankrupt or had operational stumbles, including Anaheim-based Fisker Automotive Inc., which recently laid off 26 workers from its Delaware factory and another 40 in California. Fisker said it would delay starting production of its luxury hybrid vehicles in Delaware after the U.S. Department of Energy held back part of a $529 million loan. The holdup was based on Fisker’s tardiness to market with its first model, the roughly $100,000 Karma, which saw initial deliveries in October, a few months after its original target dated.

Amonix got $9.5 million in stimulus funding in 2010 as part of the federal Recovery Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit.

Private-Sector Backers

It also was backed by a number of venture capital investors, including L.A.-based Angeleno Group LLC, Goldman Sachs in New York, and Menlo Park-based Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

The company’s investors helped raise $129.4 million in 2010, following a $25 million Series A round. Amonix said it was working on another $100 million funding round last year.

Kleiner Perkins in January appointed the firm’s Jan van Dokkum as interim chief executive of Amonix. Van Dokkum succeeded Brian Robertson, who was killed in an airplane crash in late 2011.

Van Dokkum currently is not listed on the company’s website as part of its management team.

Word of the pending job cuts by Amonix came in a recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filing by Amonix with the California Employment Development Department.

June 30

The filing set a June 30 date for the layoffs and said Amonix would lay off workers in manufacturing, operations, and research and development, among others.

The plan follows the earlier termination of 200 workers at Amonix’s Nevada manufacturing plant, which has been shut down temporarily.

The closure in Nevada, which left about 100 employees at the facility, was a temporary move, with plans to retool the factory in preparation to launch a new product line in the second half of this year, according to Eric Culberson, director of global manufacturing operations. Culberson said earlier this year that the company plans to get back to hiring in the summer.

The company makes high-concentration photovoltaic solar panels and systems for commercial use in the U.S. and internationally.

Tariffs

The plan to cut jobs this year comes on the heels of a recent announcement of a plan by the U.S. Commerce Department to impose tariffs of 30% or higher on solar panels made in China and imported to the U.S.

The ruling aimed to address the “dumping” of lower-priced products by Chinese solar panel manufacturers.

Privately held Amonix has grown from a small engineering shop that started in 1989 in Torrance with about 30 employees. Last year’s revenue totaled about $80 million.

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