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As the PV industry’s annual event, SNEC 2018 Shanghai, will be held next week, manufacturers are likely to expect new sparks during the show, leading to little surprises and changes in market conditions this week. Polysilicon in China was dominated by the execution of established contracts, with few new deals; in the si-wafer market, mono si and multi si products are still experiencing different developments. Although the mono-si demand in China was a little unstable, the phenomenon should be temporary. PV cells, as before, showed different trends in the mono-si and multi-si segments. The demand for high efficiency products with higher price–performance ratio was stable. In terms of module, whether it is the mono-si or multi-si products, the developments have remained unchanged, reflecting the wait-and-see attitude in the downstream power station market. Manufacturers are expecting that there will be new issues at the exhibition next week.
Polysilicon
The deals this week mainly came from previous orders. Chinese mono-si material price was still stable at RMB 131-133/Kg. The momentum of downstream manufacturers of multi-si material disappeared. Yet, because manufacturers have begun to reduce production and the amount of tradable polysilicon has been reduced, the market price still maintained the level of RMB 122-125/Kg. Afterwards, mono-si material is expected to maintain a balance between supply and demand. However, multi-si material price is likely to be unsteady due to unstable downstream demand.
Si-wafer
Multi-si wafer price in China this week continued to drop and approached RMB 3.1/pc; prices from first-tier manufacturers remained at RMB 3.2/pc and they tackled the problem of the decrease in price by reducing production. The market expects that multi-si wafer price can maintain RMB 3.0/pc before June 30, but according to the current market status, there will be uncertainty.
The price reduction of multi-si wafer affected mono-si wafer. Even though the demand of mono-si wafer was strong, the price started to become unstable. Mono-si wafer price slightly decreased to RMB 4.30-4.45/pc, while multi-si wafer was RMB 3.10-3.20/pc. The spread was RMB 1.2-1.25/pc, which has surpassed the reasonable figure.
PV cell
This week, the trend of PV cell prices roughly followed the si-wafer market movements. Yet, the mono-si PV cell price in China lowered slightly in order to reflect the market atmosphere. In terms of multi-si PV cell, whether it is high efficiency or general efficiency products, the prices dropped continuously. If multi-si PV cell manufacturers don’t have other supporting measures, they are likely to lose a lot of money. High efficiency mono-si PV cell price remained above RMB 1.62/W. General mono-si PV cell price was RMB 1.48/W. Multi-si PV cell price was RMB 1.30-1.35/W.
Module
This week, because most manufacturers held wait-and-see attitude and hoped SNEC could bring new change for the market, there was no huge change on the module sector. Currently, mono-si module price can reach above RMB 2.6/W and high efficiency product price slightly declines to RMB 2.65/W compared with last week; multi-si module price is RMB 2.35-2.4/W.