With the Lunar New Year around the corner, Chinese manufacturers for each sector had shut down their productions last week, affecting the supply and demand of the international market. This has caused the market’s trading prices to fluctuate rather unpredictably. For some overseas markets except China, there was demand for inventory before Lunar New Year, making the midstream and downstream prices stop falling and even increase slightly. Yet, upstream polysilicon prices still declined.
With the suspension of the productions in China, the output for products such as modules, PV cells and si-wafers all decreased dramatically. Quoted prices, price trends and transactions, on the other hand, have become sluggish. Overall, the market did not change much compared with the week before. However, due to some productions, PV cell and si-wafer manufacturers have tried to reach deals through price reductions. This week, both buyers and sellers have reached an agreement in price.
Si-wafer price basically remained stable. Because of demand, mono-si product price could remain steady. Due to Lunar New Year and the stable market share, multi-si product price stopped decreasing before Lunar New Year. Mono-si and multi-si PV cell prices reached RMB 1.5-1.52/W and RMB 1.33-1.35/W separately. Owing to the restocking demand from the overseas market, Taiwanese PV cell shipment volume increased slightly this week. However, its price has been lowered a little and was close to Chinese PV cell price
This week, upstream polysilicon prices varied. On one hand, there were differences between the quoted prices from major manufacturers and the expected demand on the market, making the seesaw struggle extend toward polysilicon; on the other hand, owing to Lunar New Year, the decrease or halt in midstream and downstream capacity resulted in the fall of urgency for demand, massively affecting the trading volume of polysilicon. The above two reasons led to great spread of polysilicon trading prices this week. Yet, the overall polysilicon price decreased. The price of polysilicon for multi-si reached RMB 128-135/kg. The quoted price of polysilicon for mono-si was RMB 140/kg owing to less trading volume; however, its trading price has declined to RMB 135-140/kg.