In this publication we present a realisation of a large-area metallisation wrap through (MWT) back-contact-solar cell with electroless-plated contacts. The MWT cell is a very promising backcontact solar-cell concept since the additional effort required to process MWT instead of conventional cells is limited to the formation of a small number of holes. In addition, the concept can easily be applied to very large area cells. We introduce a 9.8 cm x 9.8 cm MWT solar cell, which reaches an efficiency of 16.1%. Up to this point cell performance is limited by local shunting, which results from non-optimal nickel sintering. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.