In a new weekly update pv magazineOPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides a quick overview of the most important price trends in the global solar industry.
China’s new polysilicon manufacturers are expected to add a total of 150 GW of polysilicon production in the third and fourth quarters of the year, which industry players say will inevitably spill over into international markets. The price of monograde polysilicon in China has already fallen for eight consecutive weeks, hitting an 11-week low of CNY 189.93 ($27.58)/kg on April 18 (see chart), according to OPIS data.
F.o.b (FOB) China wafer prices, meanwhile, continued to trade largely sideways, with Mono M10 up 0.12% on the week to $0.831/piece. G12 was unchanged at $1.041/pc in the week of April 18.
Low inventories combined with tightness in high-purity quartz (HPQ), which is used to make consumable crucibles critical to the wafer manufacturing process, have buffered the wafer sector against weakness in the upstream polysilicon market.
The recent arrival of HPQ imports into China should help ease some of the production bottlenecks, but any delay would be unevenly distributed as most imports were bought by a few large wafer makers, sources have said.
OPIS, a Dow Jones company, provides energy prices, news, data and analysis on gasoline, diesel, jet fuel, LPG/NGL, coal, metals and chemicals, and renewable fuels and environmental commodities. It acquired pricing data assets from the Singapore Solar Exchange in 2022 and now publishes the OPIS APAC Solar Weekly report.
