Unirac takes over ground floor of US Bank building

Unirac Inc.’s new administrative headquarters at the U.S. Bank building Downtown is bustling with activity.

The company, which makes mounting platforms for solar installations, took over three-fourths of the bank’s ground floor this year, converting three of the building’s extensive office suites on Lomas Boulevard into a new central nerve center to coordinate all of Unirac’s national and international business operations. That includes a large suite for Unirac’s sales team and design engineers, a separate suite for upper management, and a newly refurbished company training center.

Unirac is also expanding and upgrading its manufacturing footprint at the nearby Springer Industrial Center on Broadway just north of Downtown, where it currently occupies an 80,000-square-foot factory and shipping dock, plus a 16,000-square-foot warehouse next door. Later this year, it will take over another 32,000 square feet of warehouse space.

It’s now refurbishing and re-equipping all the front-office areas there that Unirac’s sales team, design engineers, and management previously occupied before moving into the U.S. Bank building, said Unirac Chief Operating Officer Sean Linn.

“We’re remodeling the original facility and bringing in all new furniture,” Linn told the Journal during a tour last week. “We redid all of the administrative spaces for our operations managers and leaders.”

Unirac — a homegrown company that launched in Albuquerque in 1998 — is paving the way for potentially exponential growth in coming years as the solar industry anticipates a boom in market demand, spurred in good part by the tax credits and other incentives included in the federal Inflation Reduction Act that President Joe Biden signed into law last summer.

The company is already a leading national supplier of solar racking systems, particularly extending its market footprint since 2016, when New York-based private equity firm Tenex Capital Management acquired Unirac. That provided significant growth capital and support to aggressively expand, said CEO Peter Lorenz.

And, last October, the company announced a recapitalization investment led by Texas-based equity firm Greenbelt Capital Partners, providing additional funding to further build on Unirac’s previous success.

“We sold the company to a new investor, although the previous investor (Tenex) stayed on as a minority shareholder,” Lorenz told the Journal. “That sets us up for continued growth.”

Rapid expansionTenex’s investment in 2016 propelled Unirac into an extended period of growth and expansion over the past seven years.

Since 2018, Unirac has acquired two smaller solar firms to broaden its production line. That includes California-based Solar Hooks — a manufacturer of the attachment equipment used in solar mounting platforms — and Ohio-based Ecolibrium Solar Inc., which developed a plastic-based flat-roof racking system for commercial buildings, allowing Unirac to add a polymer product to the steel and aluminum systems it makes.

The company also opened a back-end, research-and-design office in India in 2018. And in 2021, it opened a new office south of the border that assists in supply-chain management with Guadalajara-based manufacturers, while also overseeing sales in Mexico and Central America.

Now, Unirac’s India operation is booming with 500 employees. That’s up from 270 in early 2022, and just 10 people five years ago, Lorenz said.

The India operations have allowed Unirac to significantly broaden the products and services it offers customers in the U.S. It provides a robust, back-end team of design engineers and software developers who can now support companies with system design and integration services.

“Our U.S. customers now don’t have to hire, say, five designers for a solar installation,” Lorenz said. “They can hire just one designer and outsource the rest to us to process through our India operation.”

The India team also contributes to product innovation, helping Unirac to flexibly adapt its racking structure and components. It provides customized systems specially designed for everything from shingle, metal and flat roofs to ground-mounted systems with widely-varying installation sizes for residential, commercial and industrial customers.

In addition, a specially dedicated India team coordinates Unirac’s global supply network, allowing the company to avoid the kinds of supply-chain challenges that impeded many other solar firms following the pandemic.

As the company expands its market leadership in the U.S., its domestic workforce is growing significantly. Unirac currently employs 209 people in the U.S., including nearly 190 in New Mexico. That’s up from 147 U.S.-based employees in 2021.

And it has another 13 positions now open in sales, product management, manufacturing and engineering.

“We’ve moved from two daily operational shifts in Albuquerque to three shifts now,” COO Sean Linn said. “We’re operating 24 hours a day, five days a week.”

Evolving marketsUnirac’s latest round of investment and expansion is preparing the company for future growth.

The domestic solar market is evolving. The industry expects significant growth going forward, thanks in large part to the Inflation Reduction Act, or IRA, which locked-in a decade-long, 30% federal tax credit for all residential, commercial and utility-scale solar installations. The IRA also offers up to a 30% tax credit for clean-energy manufacturing operations, including everything from solar and wind to battery storage systems.

That’s generated a surge in activity across the U.S., with 272 new clean-energy projects totaling $278 billion in new investments announced since last summer, according to the Center for American Progress.

Some of that is coming to New Mexico. On Aug. 10, Maxeon Solar Technologies announced plans to invest $1 billion in a massive solar cell and panel factory in Albuquerque.

But the IRA’s full impact could take time, and there are still significant market challenges — such as rising interest rates and tighter access to credit — which are slowing industry growth this year, particularly in residential projects, said Ryan Centerwall, CEO of Albuquerque-based Affordable Solar, the state’s largest installation company.

“The market has definitely suffered somewhat,” Centerwall told the Journal. “We expect to be down 10% to 12% in 2023 compared with last year.”

Still, without the IRA tax credits, things would be worse, Centerwall added, and over time, interest rates will come down.

“The tax credits under the IRA are certainly offsetting higher interest rates and blunting the impact,” Centerwall said. “We feel good about the market overall going forward.”

With residential solar installations accounting for about 80% of all Unirac customers, the company projects “flat” revenue this year, or even a slight decline, Lorenz said.

But Unirac remains bullish about the future.

“We believe these market conditions are temporary,” Lorenz said. “The solar industry will see significant growth over the next 10 years because of the IRA, moreso than many other industries.”