Company building solar panels on the Iron Range plans to expand to the Twin Cities

A Canadian company operating one of the largest solar panel manufacturing plants in the US on Minnesota’s Iron Range plans to open another facility in the Twin Cities.

Heliene, based in Sault Ste. Marie in Ontario, intends to invest about $145 million to build a facility that will manufacture solar panels and individual solar cells, the building blocks of larger panels.

CEO Martin Pochtaruk said he doesn’t know yet where in the metro the new plant will be located. The company plans to begin searching for an existing building this fall.

Pochtaruk said Heliene will first build two manufacturing lines to make solar panels, or modules. He hopes to have those lines installed by the fall of 2024. He said that phase of the project would employ about 250 people.

In the second phase, he said, the company would build a manufacturing line to make solar cells by the end of 2025, adding an additional 200 jobs. Those cells would then be assembled in grids to make Heliene’s larger modules.

Currently there are no solar cells manufactured in the U.S.

But that’s expected to change soon. In addition to Heliene, Pochtaruk said several other companies have announced plans to manufacture solar cells domestically, boosted largely by tax credits included in the federal Inflation Reduction Act.

“There have been several announcements, but most of those announcements are for people that are going to be, like us, making cells for their own demand, for their own consumption,” he said.

Heliene first entered Minnesota in 2018, when it took over an abandoned solar manufacturing plant in the small community of Mountain Iron, Minn.

Last year it completed a $22 million expansion there. The company employs about 155 people at the facility, with plans to add another 120 when it finishes refurbishing one of its manufacturing lines.

One of the biggest hurdles, Pochtaruk said, has been recruiting workers on the Iron Range. He said Heliene is working to compete against taconite mines that offer some of the highest wages in rural Minnesota.

“We've been making improvements to pay better and provide better benefits.”

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