Chinese solar manufacturing churns with massive expansions, coupled with bankruptcies

Even as major Chinese solar companies go bankrupt or liquidate, new Chinese groups are aggressively expanding capacity in the solar value chain driven by China’s massive demand of 15-20 GW a year. The latest company to join the fray is Tongwei Group which is planning a 5 GW solar cell capacity, after taking over LDK’s 2 GW cell capacity. The company also plans to buy the 15k ton poly capacity and is looking at increasing module capacity. The company is getting equity stakes from major upstream players like Longi and GCL Poly, which are the two largest wafer companies in China. Note Longi itself has ambitious plans of setting up 5-10 GW of mono wafer capacity and another 5 GW of mono cell and module capacities.

Read China poised to see $60 billion in solar revenues.

Even as Tongwei plans giant expansion, another Chinese company GD Solar, a subsidiary of Guodian Technology & Environment Group Corporation is shutting down around 400 MW of module and 200 MW of cell capacity, finding it unprofitable to continue. The Chinese industrial landscape remains extremely challenging with overcapacity driven by negative real interest rates creating huge capacities in steel, shipbuilding, wind turbine and solar sectors. This has not only depressed global prices for these items, but also caused many of the Chinese companies themselves to go bankrupt. The well capitalized Chinese companies are still in the expansion mode, as the Chinese government continues to push liquidity into the system. While the long term growth of the solar sector is not in doubt, the future of these new companies definitely is in doubt in my view.

China-based Tongwei Group has begun establishing a crystalline silicon solar cell factory in Chengdu City, western China. The factory will have annual production capacity of 5GWp, including 1GWp for monocrystalline solar cells, and 1GWp of the capacity will come into operation in 2016, according to China-based media reports.

Source – Digitimes