Mission Solar Energy’s solar panel manufacturing site in San Antonio, Texas, considered one of the longest-running panel assembly operations in the United States, may soon receive a boost from a global manufacturer.
Mission Solar has been making solar panels in the United States since 2014 and is owned by OCI Company, a South Korean chemical conglomerate that is involved with solar project development and polysilicon production. OCI started the assembler to supply panels to its own utility-scale projects in Texas. Mission Solar has since worked through solar panel distribution channels and mostly supplied the U.S. residential sector but was attempting plays into larger markets. The company is currently listed as having a 500-MW annual module assembly capacity in San Antonio.
Sam Martens, president of Mission Solar, submitted testimony in the ongoing antidumping/countervailing duty (AD/CVD) investigation into solar cell imports from India, Indonesia and Laos. In addition to reiterating to the U.S. International Trade Commission the challenges the U.S. solar industry faces from unfairly priced imports, Martens commented on Mission Solar’s Texas factory.
“Despite trying our best to be cost-competitive, our customers repeatedly told us that our prices are too high. Subject producers have even offered prices well below our cost of production. We simply cannot cut prices that far, and we often ended up losing the sale instead,” he said. “The continual loss of sales and revenue forced us to curtail our production, leaving us with significant excess capacity.
“Lower utilization has naturally resulted in reduced shifts and reduced employees,” Martens continued. “For example, we previously employed more than 200 workers. But, due to the market conditions caused by subject imports, we only had 70 employees by 2025, and have now temporarily ceased all manufacturing operations and related employment.
“If injurious subject imports remain unrestrained in the face of potentially shrinking demand, I am afraid that the domestic industry will once again face rising closures and mass layoffs,” he concluded.
There have been no layoff announcements by Mission Solar in Texas worker adjustment and retraining notification notices, so if employment has been temporarily ceased, it’s likely to have resulted in furloughs. When asked, Mission Solar representatives were unable to comment on the matter to Solar Power World.
It’s an unfortunate trend for long-established U.S. solar panel manufacturers. Silfab Solar furloughed workers in August at its South Carolina manufacturing site due to “temporary constraints affecting the availability of certain materials required for production.” Heliene laid off nearly 100 workers in August at its Minnesota solar panel assembly facility due to “unforeseen business circumstances.” Qcells furloughed 1,000 employees at its Georgia operations last year, but was able resume production four months later.
Mission Solar, which has long operated a small-output solar panel factory at a mixed-use community located on the former Brooks Air Force Base, announced in 2022 it would expand operations to reach 1 GW of annual module manufacturing capacity. The company built a 200,000-sq-ft addition on its property, but it was instead later described as a warehouse.
The warehouse was then assumed to become the starting point of Mission and OCI’s solar cell manufacturing operations, which the two companies announced in 2025. They would invest $265 million into the site to eventually reach 2 GW of annual cell manufacturing capacity. Martens confirmed in his ITC testimony that actual construction plans never progressed further.
That warehouse is back in play after a filing with the Texas Dept. of Licensing and Regulation in August. The filing says that $15 million will be spent to renovate the existing warehouse into the “Elite Solar factory [f]or manufacturing.” Construction is expected to begin in October and be completed in June 2027.
Elite Solar, a Singapore-headquartered panel brand (previously known as ET Solar), has affiliated panel manufacturing operations across the globe. The company’s flagship sites are now based in Egypt and Indonesia, but it has a longstanding relationship with OCI and is jointly developing a solar wafer production facility in Vietnam. This partnership could be extending to panel manufacturing in Texas.
Elite Solar provided no comment when asked by Solar Power World about the San Antonio factory plans.
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