Wynca, a Chinese supplier of industrial chemicals, announced on November 6 that it has formed a joint venture with GCL-Poly Leshan to manufacture industrial silicon materials. The new entity, the name of which is translated as “Leshan Silicon Material Technology Co. Ltd.”, has completed the business registration process and obtained the operating permit from the local market regulatory authority of Leshan. This news was covered by various Chinese renewable energy news websites. GCL-Poly is a major supplier for polysilicon and has several subsidiary manufacturing operations across China, including Leshan in Sichuan Province.
According to Wynca’s announcement, the joint venture will have an initial processing capacity of 200,000MT per year for industrial silicon powder. GCL-Poly Leshan will be the top priority with respect to the provisioning of the silicon powder because the polysilicon supplier will use the material for the manufacturing of granular silicon. Many basic production-related silicon materials are derived from this type of silicon powder. Other examples besides granular silicon include organic silicon, standard polysilicon, etc. The joint venture is expected to focus on materials that can be further processed in the downstream sections of the supply chain for PV products. Based on the production capacity development plan provided by Wynca, the joint venture will undergo two development phases to attain 200,000MT per year. The first phase, which will take 10-12 months to complete, will set up 100,000MT. Currently, the joint venture is acquiring land and preparing for construction works.
GCL-Poly announced this March that it has made breakthroughs in the development of its FBR process for producing granular silicon. High-quality granular silicon can be used to manufacture mono-Si PV products and has the advantage being more compatible with an automated feeding system. GCL-Poly has also stated that its FBR process has a fairly low upfront cost and consumes significantly less energy compared with the conventional Siemens process for producing polysilicon.