Natcore Closes Red Bank Headquarters, Relocates to Rochester, New York

Natcore Technology has closed its headquarters in Red Bank and moved to downtown Rochester, N.Y.

The company, a solar technology firm, had been doing most of its research and development at Eastman Business Park, in Rochester. NJTechWeekly.com has been covering this company since 2012.

In an interview for an article on January 5, 2012, Charles R. Provini, Natcore president and CEO, told us, “We are looking to do more in N.J.” He spoke of the company’s joint venture with Italian solar firm MX Holding S.p.A., headquartered near Milan, and how he’d been introduced to that company by Lt. Governor Kim Guadagno, who had been instrumental in helping Natcore make connections in New Jersey.

 “We would love to take our AR-Box, put the [NREL] black silicon technology on it and integrate that into our partner’s operation here in N.J., or into anyone else’s in N.J. for that matter. Our first choice is to try to do something here in N.J.,” he said.

Provini added that, before moving here, his company had sent letters to members of Congress, senators, governors and other officials, saying that the company had money and was ready to invest in their states. Natcore received two responses to all those letters, one of which was from the  lieutenant governor of New Jersey. “She aggressively followed up,” and her help “got us looking into how we could do more investment here.”

In recent years, however, Natcore has been putting more emphasis on its R&D activities in Rochester. The company opened an operations office there in June 2013 and leased a 19,000-square-foot facility housing a laboratory/clean room, a gowning room, administration offices and a warehouse.

In a prepared statement Provini said, “Rochester has been very good for us. … We’ve found some extremely talented and creative employees here. Eastman Business Park has everything a research company could need. And the business and investment communities have been consistently helpful to us.”