Strong Demand from Europe and China Stimulates Chinese Mono-Si Product Sales

Poly Price

Polysilicon prices slightly declined during the price negotiation this week, but the changes weren’t significant. The mainstream price of polysilicon for mono-Si wafer use still reached RMB 90/kg in China. As some companies lowered their price quotes, the average trading price of polysilicon for multi-Si wafer use slightly declined as well, but the differences weren’t substantial either.

The significant increase of mono-Si cell demand in China recently may cause the price drop of polysilicon to come to a halt. Following the upcoming Mid-Autumn Festival and China’s long holidays, the overall market will witness strong demand ahead of time. Polysilicon price is unlikely to drop until after China’s long holidays. In addition, despite the continuous decline of downstream multi-Si product prices, polysilicon prices for multi-Si wafer use won’t change substantially until October. For the overseas, sellers continued to reduce prices, leading to lower prices. The actual trading price reached US$ 10/kg.
 

Wafer Price

The average trading price of multi-Si wafers kept dropping to RMB 2.23/piece in China and US$ 0.29/piece in the overseas market. The price drop was larger than expected in the overseas this week. It was originally forecasted that wafer makers will control prices through lowering their utilization rates, but just a few of them have reduced their productions. Therefore, the overseas prices directly dropped to below US$ 0.3/piece this week.

No matter in China or the overseas, the price range for wafers with prices lower than the average trading price is widening. Some wafers were traded at lower prices. According to the observation, there should be companies selling their products at cheaper prices in response to the current market condition. But because it’s difficult to maintain such low prices with the price level of polysilicon, wafer prices have already hit the bottom before polysilicon prices are revised downward significantly. Low prices won’t be seen that often following the lower utilization rates. Next week, we’ll see whether mono-Si wafer prices will be adjusted in the end of September. But since downstream mono-Si product demand increases this week, the possibility of a price adjustment is small.
 

Cell Price

Affected by the re-distribution of cell selection in the European market, the PERC cell market shows completely different conditions in China and the overseas. This week, demand of the overall mono-Si products continued to increase in China. Not just high-efficiency mono-Si PERC cells that are requested by the “General Top Runner Program” witness slightly higher prices, but also demand has rebounded for mono-Si PERC and conventional mono-Si cells. The average trading price of mono-Si PERC cells with efficiencies more than 21.5% reached RMB 1.15/W. A few were traded at RMB 1.17/W too.

Thanks to the higher demand of 300W and 305W modules, prices of mono-Si PERC cells with efficiencies between 21.2 and 21.4% slightly rebounded recently, reaching RMB 1.1-1.12/W. Pressured by the negotiation of the European module makers, the overseas prices slightly dropped despite the strong demand. There are only a few numbers of suppliers that can provide conventional mono-Si cells at this moment. As a result, if there are more concentrated orders, conventional mono-Si manufacturers can sense the increase of demand. 

Demand of multi-Si cells with efficiencies more than 18.6% remained weak, with many inventories left. Prices still slightly dropped to RMB 0.88-0.91/W. As Taiwanese manufacturers have lost a target market – the European market, they couldn’t clear out multi-Si cell stock, leading to lower prices.
 

Module Price

Overall, Chinese module prices remained stable recently, yet, the overseas module prices still reflected a downtrend. 

For mono-Si modules, China’s “General Top Runner Program” continued to stimulate the product pull for 60-cell 310W high-efficiency modules. The European orders are now handled by the Chinese capacities rather than the capacities in Southeast Asia. Recently, demand of 300W modules rebounded, which significantly lowered the capacity utilization rates for Vietnamese module makers. However, top-tier Chinese module makers can still maintain high utilization rates.

For multi-Si modules, because the price of 270W multi-Si modules with lower efficiencies dropped more significantly before, demand slightly rebounded recently, but not good enough to stabilize multi-Si module demand.