Demand of Major Commodities to Go Up With India's Ambitious Solar Target

India has set an ambitious target of installing 100 GW of solar installations by 2022. While this will benefit the overall power and energy industry in India, demand for other major commodities like aluminum, glass, and silver will also increase.

Aluminium frames play an important role in an average solar panel providing it the required structural stability. It forms part of the frames around the solar panel, and the bottom back sheet. While aluminum also has many other industrial uses and solar will just account for a fraction of its production, the overall demand for glass and silver will be influenced by solar installations to a great extent.

The glass is majorly used by real estate, infrastructural development, retail, automotive and food & beverages sectors. But with increasing solar installations in the country recently, glass has become a major beneficiary. Glass has an important role to play in the development of the growing solar energy sector.  Borosil Glass Works is India’s largest solar glass firm. Almost 60% of India’s demand for solar glass is supplied by Borosil alone, while the rest of 40% is catered to by Chinese and other India glass companies.

Silver is regarded as an auspicious metal in India and people use it majorly for religious ceremonies, festivals, weddings and many other cultural events. Silver is mined along with other metals such as copper, gold, lead, zinc, sulfur, antimony, arsenic or chlorine. It is estimated that it currently takes about 20 grams of silver to build an average solar panel. Hindustan Zinc Ltd. is the largest producer of silver in India. Silver as a commodity is also traded in the Indian commodity exchanges like National Commodity & Derivatives Exchange Ltd, Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd. and National Multi Commodity Exchange of India Ltd.

Also, read our List of Iron Ore Mining Companies in India

“Demand for silver has been increasing since the past few years and so have the prices. Demand is largely coming from solar panel and electric vehicle manufacturers. We expect silver prices to be bullish this year and may touch Rs 40,000-41,000 a kg on MCX or in the physical market by July-August,” said Anuj Gupta, deputy vice-president of research, Angel Commodities.

Source: Economic Times

Hindustan Zinc Ltd. is also planning to raise its silver production to 1,000 tonnes over the next 3-5 years following the growth opportunity in solar. These industry giants should, therefore, benefit from the rising demand of silver and glass as a result of increasing number of solar installations in India.