Solar panel manufacturer Qcells revealed on Friday that it would furlough one-third of its workers at its two plants in Georgia. The 1,000 employees will temporarily have reduced pay and working hours due to increased detentions by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) of solar cells and other upstream panel components. Qcells will also lay off 300 workers from staffing agencies at the two plants.
Qcells 1.7-GW module factory in Dalton, Georgia
The federal government has stepped up enforcement of the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), which restricts Chinese goods made with forced labor from entering the United States. CBP began detaining silicon solar cells made by South Korean-headquartered Qcells earlier this summer. Qcells has repeatedly stated that its products do not use Chinese components. The company has a long history of using polysilicon from fellow South Korean company OCI and uses component manufacturing in Southeast Asia.
The lack of adequate solar cell supply means that Qcells cannot complete panel assembly at its Georgia manufacturing plants, thus requiring the temporary reduction in working hours. Despite Qcells being one of the first domestic manufacturers to start construction on new solar cell and wafer manufacturing operations, the company is still only performing panel assembly in the United States.
A similar CBP detention has been affecting Maxeon, a solar panel manufacturer with some Chinese financing but no documented connection to forced labor happening in China. Maxeon’s Mexico-assembled panels have been prevented from entering the country since summer 2024, despite the company providing thousands of pages of documents demonstrating full compliance in UFLPA. Maxeon has resorted to filing a complaint with the U.S. Court of International Trade and is awaiting updates amidst the government shutdown.
In Maxeon’s case, the once-global company now only focuses on the U.S. market. Maxeon sold its European, Asian and Latin American sales channels and entities, while keeping its Mexican assembly plant and moving forward with plans for a 2-GW solar panel factory in New Mexico. With most of its products unable to get into the country, Maxeon financials have nosedived. The company reported $39 million in revenue for the first six months of 2025, whereas it reached $371 million for the same period in 2024. Plans for the U.S. factory have paused.
Marta Stoepker, Qcells senior director of corporate communications, said in a statement to local news that the company was forced to scale back production “while our shipments into the U.S. were delayed in the customs clearance process.
“Qcells expects to resume full production in the coming weeks and months. Our commitment to building the entire solar supply chain in the United States remains,” she continued. “We will soon be back on track with the full force of our Georgia team delivering American-made energy to communities around the country.”
