News
DayStar On Track to Achieve Commercial Production Objectives
CEO Provides Update on Operational Progress
“This past quarter has seen the most significant developments in our Company since going public in early 2004. With cash and investments over $14.5 million at September 30, 2005 as a result of the near full exercise of our Class A warrants, Daystar has the opportunity to add significant capacity to all aspects of our business, with our primary focus being on the implementation of our commercial scale manufacturing plans.
“Although seemingly quiet from a general news perspective, the buzz within the Company has been deafening as we have been powering through our Gen-II facility build-out and production ramp-up. Much time and effort has remained concentrated on our manufacturing initiatives with particular emphasis being placed on addressing the associated infrastructure requirements, operations training and instrument tuning required to bring our solar cell products into ‘commercial scale’ production.
“Here, and in the future, we will qualify our production status with various descriptors such as ‘pilot’, ‘commercial scale’, and ‘full’ to highlight our continuous efforts to increase the output of our manufacturing infrastructure, whether it be our Gen-II or Gen-III methodologies. Employing these descriptors, full production would refer to a particular manufacturing platform operating at capacity. That platform can then be replicated to increase overall production capacity for the Company. Pilot production, on the other hand, is early stage manufacturing that includes periodic development efforts aimed at improving product quality, throughput or yield. Commercial scale production, at present, means approximately a minimum of 1000 cell starts per shift.
“Using this vernacular, we are currently in pilot production and rapidly moving towards commercial scale production with a goal of 6000 cell starts per day by the end of 2006 at our HalfMoon facility. Our pilot production efforts have resulted in our first product deliveries to Blitzstrom for integration and testing. We are anticipating that our next product deliveries to our customers will occur in December. We are extremely pleased with this milestone, but still recognize that there is much work to be done to achieve our near-term goals.
“In parallel to our efforts to increase capacity on our Gen-II line, we have also made significant progress with our Gen-III design and planning efforts. In this regard, we have engaged a number of outside experts to assist our engineering team with production tool design and procurement. We have also completed the conceptual design for our new and highly sophisticated 100,000 square foot Gen-III manufacturing facility to be located in the new Saratoga Technology Energy Park (STEP) in Malta, NY. Along with our proprietary manufacturing equipment, this facility will house state of the art design features that will allow DayStar to boast one of the finest solar cell factories in the world. You can expect to hear much more about our Gen-III progress in the coming quarter as we finalize our roadmap, including capital, infrastructure, and personnel needs.
“We are particularly excited today by the many new end-user product opportunities that some of our current and pending customers are finding possible with the unique attributes of our solar cell. Of particular note is the fact that DayStar has been actively participating in prime contractor proposal submissions in response to government High Altitude Airship solicitations, and maintain that our unique and proprietary LightFoil™ product represents the best-of-class solution for that emerging market. Although the government business development cycle is quite long, we are gaining traction with potential government and commercial customers and are examining our internal focus in this arena to fully exploit the emerging opportunities arising in the marketplace.
“As recently reported, DayStar has nearly doubled the size of our staff, filling many key positions. We have enjoyed considerable success at recruiting an inordinately high caliber of scientists, engineers, production line operators and sales and administrative personnel to DayStar, which speaks volumes about the growing world-class reputation of our Company. To ensure our growth keeps pace with our phased and incremental production capacity increases, DayStar is also aggressively pursuing new vendor, supplier, local and national government partners and new customer relationships – an effort that is proving to be very fruitful.
About DayStar Technologies, Inc.
Photovoltaic Foil™, PV Foil™, TerraFoil™, TerraFoil-SP™ and LightFoil™ are registered trademarks of DayStar Technologies, Inc.
SAFE HARBOR STATEMENT: This news release contains "forward-looking statements" that are made pursuant to the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. "Forward-looking statements" describe future expectations, plans, results, or strategies and are generally preceded by words such as "future, " "plan" or "planned, " "will" or "should," "expected," "anticipates," "draft," "eventually" or "projected." You are cautioned that such statements are subject to a multitude of risks and uncertainties that could cause future circumstances, events, or results to differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements, including risks that our products may not achieve customer acceptance or that they will not perform as expected, and other risks identified in our annual report on Form 10-K and other filings with the SEC. You should consider these factors in evaluating the forward-looking statements included herein, and not place undue reliance on such statements. The forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and DayStar Technologies Inc. undertakes no obligation to update such statements.FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT
FOR MEDIA
Erica Dart, Sawchuk Brown & Associates
518-462-0318 or via email darte@sawchukbrown.com
FOR INVESTOR RELATIONS
Dodi Handy, Elite Financial Communications Group
407-585-1080 or via email dsti@efcg.net