News

20 October 2010

 

Wisconsin awards 5N Plus $500,000 for PV materials manufacturing and panel recycling plant

5N Plus Inc of Montreal, Canada, a provider of high-purity metals and compounds for electronic applications, says that its US subsidiary 5N Plus Corp of DeForest, WI has been awarded $500,000 in funding from the State Energy Program of Wisconsin to support equipment purchases directed at expanding its recycling activities and to create new jobs.

Representing an investment of more than $4m, the 60,500 square-foot facility will recycle solar modules and manufacture specialty compounds for thin-film PV applications, and will be operational in the coming weeks. 

“This new facility is an important milestone for 5N Plus as it expands its footprint in the USA,” says VP Nicholas Audet. “The DeForest plant enables us to recycle solar panels and to provide cradle-to-cradle solutions to the PV industry,” he adds.

5N Plus was founded in 2000 after developing electronic materials within Canadian natural resource company Noranda Inc (one of the world’s largest mining firms). It focuses on specialty high-purity metals such as tellurium, cadmium, selenium, germanium, indium and antimony and also produces related II-VI semiconducting compounds such as cadmium telluride (CdTe), cadmium sulphide (CdS) and indium antimonide (InSb) as precursors for the growth of crystals for electronic applications, including infra-red detectors for night-vision systems, gamma-ray detectors for nuclear imaging in medicine, and thin-film photovoltaic cells for solar panels. The firm is an integrated producer, with both primary and secondary refining capabilities (enabling it to control the entire manufacturing process), and also provides recycling services to treat production residues.

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