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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | September 28, 2017 |
Recently, the US and India came up with updates for the “Section 201” and anti-dumping duties, respectively. However, the two trade wars and China’s anti-dumping and countervailing duties of polysilicon imports won’t be clear until October and November this year. In addition, it’s unknown when the subsidies for the distributed generation (DG) systems will be lowered in China, leading to unpredictable price trend forecast for Q4. Despite this, companies’ early preparation for stock caused by China’s long holidays pushed up cell prices slightly.
Poly
Wacker US will suspend the production for several months, driving up the polysilicon prices in the overseas. The average trading price of polysilicon increased to US$ 13.5-14/kg in the overseas. It’s estimated that the prices will continue to rise slightly in the short run. Since Chinese makers take turn to conduct the equipment maintenance lately, lower supplies have led to an average trading price of RMB 148-150/kg in China. It may be difficult to have the supply shortage alleviated in October.
Wafer
The switch from slurry to diamond wire multi-Si wafers is faster than the anticipation, squeezing the demands of slurry wafers. The average trading price of diamond wire multi-Si wafers slightly increased this week, while slurry prices slightly declined, widening the price gap between the two products. The price of diamond wire multi-Si wafers reached RMB 4.7-4.8/piece in China and US$ 0.65/piece in the overseas. That of slurry multi-Si wafers reached RMB 5.05-5.15/piece in China. The price of super high-efficiency wafers in the overseas dropped from US$ 0.7-0.72/piece to US$ 0.69-0.72/piece. Conventional high-efficiency wafer is priced at US$ 0.69/piece. Mono-Si wafer prices remain unchanged.
Cell
Module makers started to purchase cells and stock this week. The overseas module makers also placed many orders with cell makers, driving up multi-Si cell prices by RMB 0.02-0.03/W in China. But as China’s long holidays arrive, module makers are expecting to accept the rising cell prices due to the need to stock. Therefore, cell prices will soon increase from RMB 1.74-1.75/W to RMB 1.76-1.77/W. The previously higher cell prices in Taiwan stayed flat at US$ 0.234-0.235/W following the lower wafer prices.
Module
The module market witnessed stable prices recently. Yet, the new minimum import price (MIP) has been released in Europe. The MIP of mono and multi-Si cells and module has not just been lowered, but also the Chinese manufacturers listed in the MIP were permitted to use lower prices to ship to Europe from October 1st 2017. It’s expecting that module prices will slightly drop in Europe, while module prices remain stable in other markets.