Enfield solar manufacturer STR Holdings Inc. is selling its quality-testing operations for $275 million to the nation’s best known test labs for consumer products for STR to focus on production and sales of photovoltaic components.
STR announced the sale Tuesday of its quality assurance segment to Underwriters Laboratories, headquartered in Northbrook, Ill.
For the past two years, STR’s solar segment has seen strong growth, more than doubling sales to roughly $70 million quarterly, thanks to strong sales in Asia. The quality-assurance segment hasn’t had as much success, with sales hovering unchanged around $30 million quarterly since 2009.
On the strength of its solar sales, STR is opening a 300,000-square-foot facility in East Windsor in the coming 12 months, closing its manufacturing locations in Enfield and Somers.
STR was founded in 1944 as a plastics research and development firm, but over the course of the next 30 years expanded and focused on two specialties – manufacturing solar encapsulants and providing quality assurance services to manufacturers, importers, suppliers and retailers.
