SCHOTT AG is a German manufacturer of high-quality industrial glass products, its main markets are household appliances, pharmaceutical industries, solar energy, electronics, optics as well as automotive. According to the 2008 Annual Report, Schott AG employs 17,363 people in 42 countries.
Schott AG is well known by the photographic community for manufacturing the glass components of Zeiss and Schneider Kreuznach lenses. They also publish the Schott Glass Catalog, which is a standard reference for the properties of the many optical glasses produced by them and other companies.
In 2009 Schott inaugurated a $100 million state-of-the-art solar manufacturing facility in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA to build receivers for concentrated solar thermal power plants (CSP) and 64 MW of photovoltaic modules. They were already making 15 MW of photovoltaics annually in Billerica, Massachusetts until the factory was closed in 2009. Schott plans to produce crystalline PV cells and modules with a total of 450 MW annually. In addition, the company will produce thin-film PV wafers with a capacity of 100 MW.
On Friday, June 29, 2012, Schott announced that its Albuquerque plant would close down, laying off all photovoltaic cell manufacturing employees immediately and ramping down the remaining employees over the rest of the summer.