Qingdao Gaoce Technology Co. Ltd. announced on April 28 that it has signed an investment cooperation agreement with the management committee of Jianhu Hi-Tech Industrial Development Zone. Under the agreement, Gaoce will work with the committee to set up the second-phase expansion project for PV wafer manufacturing in the development zone. Gaoce said that the initiation of the second-phase expansion project is in accordance with its own development needs and will enable it to capture more market opportunities and rapidly promote the adoption of its equipment solutions across different industrial applications. This announcement was first picked up by local Chinese news outlets and other renewable energy news websites.
Gaoce provides equipment for cutting hard and brittle materials, including diamond wire saw for slicing PV wafers. As the announcement indicates, the company has also moved downstream and is directly involved in the production of PV wafers. Jianhu High-Tech Industrial Development Zone is located in Yancheng, a prefecture-level city in China’s Jiangsu Province. The official name of the second-phase expansion project has yet to be finalized and is still subject to the approval of the company’s management authority.
Gaoce said that the decision to initiate the second-phase expansion project was based on considerations of various factors such as market demand as well as the result of a feasibility analysis of the project. The company’s board of directors formally approved the proposal at a meeting held on April 28. The second-phase expansion project will add an annual production capacity of 12GW for large-size PV wafers. The total investment in the project is estimated around RMB 631 million. The company also estimates that the project will take about 12 months to complete. During this period, the company will construct the facility buildings and procure, install, and calibrate the equipment (e.g., diamond wire saws and wafer cleaning machines). The second-phase expansion project is scheduled to enter operation in 2023 and will not affect the company’s financial results for 2022.
Gaoce said that it will be in a better position to take advantage of various sources of downstream demand with the additional wafer production capacity. Furthermore, it will be able to fully leverage its own technical and synergistic advantages in wafer slicing equipment, related consumables, and other similar kinds of processing solutions. This, in turn, will greatly enhance its own market competitiveness.