Bulgarian Kaolin's Unit To Invest 20 Mln Euro in Solar Panels Factory

"The factory will have three production lines with annual capacity of six megawatts of panels each," Kaolin investor relations director Antonia Tzenova told SeeNews.

The facitliy, to be located in the Danube town of Silistra, will become operational in 2009, she added.

Solarpro, set up in late 2007, has already contracted the supply of 2.4 MW of integrated photovoltaic panels.

Local businessman Nikolay Berov doubled his stake in Solarpro to 20% following a 4.5 million lev ($3.3 million/2.3 million euro) capital hike earlier in 2008 that raised the company's capital to six million levs.

Kaolin owns 80% of Solarpro, which is the second producer of integrated photovoltaic panels in Bulgaria, along with a unit of Greek matallurgical grop Viohalco.

Kaolin (kaolin.bg), which is 67.85 %-owned by industrial and financial group Alfa Finance Holding, is the sole producer of kaolin and silica sands in Bulgaria.

Kaolin shares, part of the blue-chip SOFIX index of the Bulgarian Stock Exchange, closed 6.36% down at 5.15 levs in a volume of some 87,000 shares on Tuesday.

(1 euro = 1.95583 Bulgarian levs)