Chinese PV industry has been facing serious challenges since the beginning of 2014, and the market change is now affecting Taiwan. Some Chinese makers started to cut Taiwanese orders and this may bring negative influence to Taiwanese PV manufacturers’ performance in the second half of this year.
In order to evade being imposed extra tariffs, some Chinese PV manufacturers purchased PV cells from Taiwan to make module exports to the United States after the first phase of anti-dumping and countervailing investigation. However, U.S. Department of Commerce’s preliminary ruling in the second phase of PV trade war with China would raise Chinese PV products’ costs, meaning that there is likely to be changes in the U.S. market. Some Chinese manufacturers decided to massively cut orders shifted to Taiwan under such an uncertain situation.
It’s revealed that PV orders shifted from China to Taiwan in June were only two thirds of the average amount before announcement of DOC’s preliminary ruling in countervailing tariffs. Rapidly decreased orders have negatively influenced Taiwanese manufacturers in June, and it may continue until August, pointed an insider. Meanwhile, Chinese manufacturers have started entering into Japanese market, where Taiwanese manufacturers used to export PV products to. This reduces the market share of Taiwanese cell makers in Japan. These facts may lead to Taiwanese makers’ output reduction, and further affect the PV industry’s performance in the second half of 2014.