Price plummets, photovoltaic polysilicon companies operating rates less than 20%

Affected by the plunge in prices, most polysilicon companies in China are in dire business, and some of them have already been forced to stop production or to stop production.

On October 9th, the China Nonferrous Metals Association Silicon Industry Branch stated that the hope of enterprises to rely on technological transformation to reverse the industrial difficulties is not too great. “Because the development of the polysilicon industry depends on the downstream terminal needs, other aspects may have benign business operations. Impact, but not dominant."

Overcapacity price plummets

On October 9, the ton price of polysilicon recently fell to 130,000 to 150,000 yuan. At the beginning of this year, the domestic polysilicon price could still be maintained at around 210,000 to 230,000 yuan per ton.

In fact, at present, although polysilicon prices have shown signs of stabilization and recovery, they have not yet completely formed a state of "bottoming." According to the quarterly report of NPD Solarbuzz's third quarter polysilicon and silicon supply chain, the average price of polysilicon for photovoltaics this year is expected to drop 52% ​​from 2011.

With regard to this price pre-judgment, the above-mentioned club members also confirmed that although each organization has different price statistics, specific data may be different, but “this year’s price decline is still half of what it was last year”.

Behind the "dropping price" of polysilicon prices is the oversupply of the industry and the frustration of the demand in the downstream terminal market.

“Although many leading polysilicon producers have already been operating at a loss, it is expected that global polysilicon production capacity will still increase by 22% and 18% respectively in 2012 and 2013.” The NPD Solarbuzz report shows that unless the demand in the end market exceeds the expected demand, Many of the 57 second- and third-tier polysilicon manufacturers will exit the market in the next 18 months.

According to the above-mentioned members of the Silicon Industry Branch, in the country, the argument that polysilicon has excess production capacity has been mentioned in the past. According to the current situation, although output is not surplus, the production capacity is certainly surplus. According to statistics of the Silicon Industry Branch, even if many companies stop production, the supply of polysilicon in the first half of the year will still exceed 6,000 tons.

China's reliance on imports of polysilicon from the United States, South Korea, and Germany is relatively heavy, and it also has a severe impact on domestic polysilicon companies. "Before the photovoltaic power plant is launched quickly and the domestic polysilicon market has not been opened, the surplus capacity of the polysilicon industry will continue." Shen Hongwen, a researcher at China Investment Advisor New Energy Industry, said.