The recent Chinese PV market is warm enough to drive price increase of polysilicon, a sector in PV value chain that struggled for significant price downturn during the fourth quarter of 2015. PV wafer manufacturers are piling up polysilicon before the Chinese New Year holiday so the price jumped from last week’s RMB 104~106/kg to RMB 108~110/kg. As the Chinese New Year is around the corner, EnergyTrend expects an upward trend in the polysilicon sector. However, the total production capacity is still large enough to meet all demands, meaning that it is unlikely to see supply shortage after the holidays.
In contrast to the heating-up market, polysilicon trade in Taiwan remained flat during this week.
Quotes for multi-si wafers for February orders slightly grew. Multi-si wafers were mostly sold at around US$0.90/pc in Taiwan, while the quotes in China were still high. The most noticeable situation is that many Chinese first-tier manufacturers have increased mono-si products’ volume in their 2016 business strategies because the quotes of mono-si wafers had dropped to a level lower than multi-si wafers. Such a competitive price brought mono-si wafer manufacturers a large amount of orders in China. As a result, we project a better year for mono-si products in the Chinese market.
Price trend of PV cells went correspondent with EnergyTrend’s expectation – the quotes went slightly up for February orders, and some manufacturers reported the same spot price with the prior week. The restricted price trend was resulted from the rapid increase in previous months. The price outlook for post-holiday is not clear at present, but it is observed that the recent order volume was not as high as in prior months. OEM orders for mono-si PV cells, on the other hand, reversely increased during this week.
PV module prices remained at approximately US$0.52/watt thanks to the continuously strong demand for PV power plants in China. EnergyTrend expects a relatively even price trend for multi-si PV modules in the market until the Chinese New Year, while the spot price of PV modules outside China could be sold at a lower level than earlier.