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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | September 14, 2017 |
An explosion took place at Wacker’s factory in Tennessee, US, on September 8th, bringing more variables to the unstable polysilicon prices. Due to China’s high anti-dumping and countervailing duties on the polysilicon imports, the factory’s 20,000 tons of polysilicon were mostly supplied to non-Chinese wafer makers.
Poly
According to InfoLink’s database, since it’s difficult for the overseas companies to ship the products to China due to the high anti-dumping and countervailing duties, top-tier polysilicon makers like Wacker US, Hemlock, REC Silicon, and Hanwha can only target on non-Chinese wafer makers. There will still be over 10GW of annual polysilicon capacity even though Wacker US temporarily suspends their production and Hemlock/REC Silicon keep their utilization rates at a low level.
Following the total ingot capacity of 10GW in Taiwan, Korea, and other regions, the supply and demand relationship is relatively balanced for now. Wacker’s incident didn’t lead to higher polysilicon prices in the overseas. Consequently, Wacker’s production suspension will not bring much impact to the polysilicon market. The average trading price of polysilicon reached RMB 146-150/kg in China and US$ 12-13.5/kg in the overseas.
Wafer
The short supply of slurry multi-Si wafers has been alleviated slowly this week. Most manufacturers could purchase enough slurry multi-Si wafers. Because more and more cell production lines have switched to use diamond wire sawing, the demands for diamond wire multi-Si wafers have increased significantly. Diamond wire multi-Si wafer is in short supply this week. Although the prices remained flat at RMB 4.65-4.75/piece, it’s difficult for cell makers to purchase more diamond wire multi-Si wafers.
The average trading price of mono-Si wafers reached RMB 6-6.2/piece in China and US$ 0.78-0.84/piece in Taiwan. The leading mono-Si wafer maker can’t completely resume the production in October and there will be national holidays in China, and thus future prices will keep changing.
Cell
Multi-Si cell prices didn’t change much in China this week, reaching RMB 1.74-1.75/W. For Taiwan, although many countries in the overseas markets have placed orders with Taiwanese cell makers this month, cell prices in the overseas slightly declined to US$ 0.234-0.235/W. Meanwhile, cell prices stayed flat at US$ 0.25-0.255/W in third-party countries.
Module
Module prices remain stable recently. But owing to the lower subsidies for distributed generation (DG) projects, the “Section 201”, the anti-dumping and countervailing duties in India, and the end of Europe’s peak-selling season, the price trend won’t be clear until October.