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Solyndra plant may find a buyer in Seagate

Seagate has offered to buy the idle Solyndra plant in California, though the price is well below what it cost to build the facility, according to a report.

Brooke Crothers Former CNET contributor
Brooke Crothers writes about mobile computer systems, including laptops, tablets, smartphones: how they define the computing experience and the hardware that makes them tick. He has served as an editor at large at CNET News and a contributing reporter to The New York Times' Bits and Technology sections. His interest in things small began when living in Tokyo in a very small apartment for a very long time.
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President Obama tours a construction site at Solyndra in May 2010.
President Obama tours a construction site at Solyndra in May 2010. Official White House Photo by Lawrence Jackson

Solyndra may be bankrupt, but that doesn't mean its California facility is out of commission. Disk-drive maker Seagate is making an offer for the property, the San Jose Mercury News reports.

Seagate has offered $90.3 million to buy the sprawling Solyndra solar-panel factory in Fremont, Calif., the Merc reports. That price is about 70 percent below the $300 million it cost to construct the plant, according to bankruptcy court records cited by the newspaper.

The Obama Administration, via the Energy Department, essentially underwrote the formation of Solyndra with a $535 million loan guarantee.

If Seagate's offer succeed, the company will complete the purchase no later than Feb. 28, 2013.

U.S.-based Seagate is one of the world's largest makers of hard disk drives. It acquired disk maker Maxtor in 2006 and Samsung's HDD in December 2011.

Seagate could not be reached for comment.