You have to wonder about Spire - when the rest of the solar industry is booming, they have just reported a widening Q4 loss.

So news that they are going to work together with Germany's KUKA Schweissanlagen GmbH to combine their machine technologies to meet growing demand for fully automated large-scale photovoltaic (PV) manufacturing lines is 2 steps in the right direction;

i) the economies of scale in solar manufacturing have been self-evident for a long time
ii) it gets them additional exposure to the German marketplace - approximately 80% of world demand

Since my last post on Spire back in September when I saw similarities in their role to those who sold the shovels in the Gold Rush, the stock has clearly done well. But it must be disappointing to the managers as well as the stockholders, that for a company that prides itself on being part of the solar business since 1980, that they are not much bigger and at least profitable.