“The offer was lodged today, and there is now a meeting going on with the receiver,” of the German group, which has been in bankruptcy proceedings since April, an Isofoton spokeswoman said.

“What we want is a European group, we are Europeans, we don’t want relocations and we want to keep all the research and development, which is very important for Q-Cells and us, too,” she added.

“We are going to keep the employees,” the Isofoton spokeswoman said, declining to give financial details of the bid beyond saying that its project had the backing of a US fund.

Q-Cells announced on Sunday it had been bought by the Hanwha Group for around €50 million ($63 million) in cash as well as a take-over of its debt “in the low hundreds of millions”.

But the deal was still subject to approval by creditors at a meeting due to be held on Wednesday.

The South Korean group planned to take over the Q-Cells’ subsidiary in Malaysia and its German research and production site in Thalheim, keeping on about three quarters of its workforce there, it said.

Q-Cells was the leading German maker of solar cells but announced in April it would file for bankruptcy as it saw no secure financial basis for its future.

The company, which employed a workforce of more than 2,000, had been in dire financial straits amid a series of corporate failures in the solar power sector in Germany.

AFP/hc