By Frank Andorka, Senior Correspondent
What Happened:And now in this corner, from the other end of the Section 201 tariff case, comes the news that Suniva is literally being sold for parts by its creditor SQN Capital Management.:
- Who could have seen this coming? (Everyone. Everyone saw this coming.)
- SQN Capital Management is the same outfit that famously offered to sell Suniva off to the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for a cool $55 million left on a Central Park bench at 3 a.m.
- Now they’ve gotten the OK to sell off the manufacturing equipment at a public auction, does anyone really think they’re going to plow the money back into the company to restart production? No. No one does.
From Suniva’s Facebook page, that day they all got into scrubs and delivered a solar panel by hand.
SolarWakeup’s View: Lordy, when it rains it pours.
This morning I got to write about the end of SolarWorld as an independent company as its assets were purchased by SunPower, which could signal an exit for them from the utility-scale market. Now I have to write about Suniva, the other Keystone Cop in the tariff travesty and the one that started it all.
Unfortunately, on this side of the ledger, there is no feel-good story about saving jobs for the citizens of Hillsboro, Oregon. In this scenario, the company’s major creditor SQN Capital Management – who offered about a year ago to settle the trade case with the Chinese Chamber of Commerce for $55 million and a bucket of balls – has now gotten permission from the bankruptcy judge to sell Suniva off for parts, specifically its manufacturing equipment, at a public auction.
I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if SQN gets the $58 million Suniva owes it out of the equipment sale, it is going to take the money and run. And to say selling the production equipment would make it unlikely Suniva will ever return to production is like calling the Pope Catholic or me a Bernie Kosar fan. In other words, “Duh.”
All of this news today leads me to ponder the following: If one of the trade-tariff companies is being sold and the other is going to disappear into the cornfield, what the hell did we spend the past year fighting for (or against, depending on what side you were on)? Why did we have this extremely long, divisive battle if the two main combatants were going to leave the field early anyway?
One of my friends said it was all for the lawyers; another said it was to pump up SolarWorld’s valuation. Both could be true, I suppose.
All I know is that I have wasted far too much ink and breath on this divisive issue. Maybe this sordid chapter of solar’s history is finally coming to an end (with a whimper, not a bang).
More:
Suniva creditor wins U.S. bankruptcy court approval to sell company’s assets (Reuters)