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Print Edition StoriesTuesday, March 2, 2010
Konarka collects $20M from new partner Konica Minolta
By Mass High Tech staff
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Solar power technology company Konarka Technologies Inc. has taken in a $20 million investment from Japanese giant Konica Minolta Holdings Inc. in a deal that will have the two companies collaborate on organic thin-film photovoltaics.
Lowell-based Konarka is already producing a flexible thin-film photovoltaic product that it calls Power Plastic. Konica Minolta will bring to the table its experience in materials, optical and coating technologies from its decades in the photgraphy, photo processing and document handling businesses. The collaboration is scheduled to launch full-scale in April, officials said.
If the joint development project achieves set milestones, the companies plan to establish a joint venture company in Japan to produce organic thin-film photovoltaic panels. This would be in addition to Konarka’s existing production facility for its Power Plastic in New Bedford.
In January, Konarka raised $23.8 million in a Series G round of funding as well as a warrant sale. The sale was a mix of equity and warrants for preferred and common stock with an exercise price of $3.8 million. It is not clear which firms invested in this latest round; current investors include 3i, Chevron Technology Ventures, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Good Energies, Mackenzie Investments, the Massachusetts Green Energy Fund, New Enterprise Associates, Partech International, Total S.A. and Vanguard Ventures.
Last February, Konarka took in $5 million in state funding to build the New Bedford production plant, from the Emerging Technology Fund of Massachusetts Development Finance Agency and the Massachusetts Renewable Energy Trust’s Business Expansion Initiative.
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