Taiwan Solar Industry

The Taiwanese solar industry has mostly concentrated on solar cell production, which they supply mainly to the Japanese and Chinese solar companies. Taiwanese earlier used to supply European solar module companies, but they are mostly bankrupt now. Companies such as Gintech, Motech, Neo Solar etc. have now become major suppliers of high quality solar cells to Chinese companies as well as Japanese companies such as Sharp, Kyocera and others. The Taiwanese solar industry has suffered due to its lack of vertical integration and end customer linkages. The companies are mostly OEM players to branded companies. Though Taiwan has benefited in the last couple of years from the major solar trade wars taking place, that period is coming to an end. The Chinese companies had used Taiwan made solar cells to circumvent duties on exports to the USA. But now the USA government is planning to extend its investigation into Taiwanese made solar products and has already made Motech and Gintech as respondents to its ITC inquiry.

Japan has become the second largest solar market in the world thanks to generous government subsidies on solar energy production. However, the Japanese solar giants such as Sharp, Mitsubishi cannot compete on costs with the Chinese solar module companies. They have been outsourcing production of solar cells to Taiwan and making modules. But now they are changing this strategy as well, leaving the complete production of solar panels to their outsourcing partners. Taiwan has very little solar module capacity compared to its massive 7 GW plus solar capacity. The Taiwanese solar cell companies are now scrambling to increase their solar module capacity to meet the changed Japanese requirements. They fear that they will lose this OEM market to the much bigger, lower cost Chinese solar companies such as Jinko Solar (JKS), Canadian Solar (CSIQ), Trina Solar (TSL) and others.

We have been advocating that the Taiwanese should look at becoming more integrated players, as they are vulnerable in making solar cells alone. They should also look at marketing and pushing their own brands otherwise they might become irrelevant, as quality and brand power becomes more important.

Source – DigiTimes