GT Solar, a global provider of poly silicon production technology, and sapphire and silicon crystalline growth systems and materials for the solar, LED and other specialty markets held a press briefing at SNEC, one of the most influential international PV shows held in Shanghai, China. GT Solar first reported its financial results from Q3 fiscal year 2011 and relative weightings of revenues from different business sectors.
The company booked revenue of $167 million with more than 480 DSS units shipped for PV and $73 million booked earnings for poly silicon. As for sapphire, more than 84 million for two equipment orders were booked in Q3 and 33.3 million OCI order is to be received in Q4. Combined revenue totaled a record high of 263 million with gross margin above 46%. President and CEO, Tom Gutierrez pointed out that current sapphire materials capacity is sold out and the expansion to 6M TIE is under way and on schedule. Notably, 98% of revenues come from Asia and the backlog was more than 1.2 billion dollars.
President and CEO at GT Solar , Tom Gutierrez (Photo Credit: EnergyTrend)
The company takes pride in enabling customers, existing market players or new entrants, to produce high quality crystal structures to ensure the ultimate electrical conversion efficiency of the solar cell through its continual technology advancements and value added services. The new DSS650 features the latest technologies including highest yielded throughput, production of largest G5 ingot and better reliability and other improvements such as enhanced spill containment for larger ingots and ancillary equipment for larger ingots. GT Solar stressed that overall, not only will DSS650 reduce consumable costs, the new DSS650 will also increase productivity by 25% over its last model DSS450.
As the most technologically advanced equipment available on the market, DSS650 is expected to impact the upstream and downstream of the supply chain. Market participants can expect to see:
- New ancillary equipment with crucible coating, charge and ingot handling, and furnace loading and unloading
- Continuation of industry standard G5 platform which means minimal training and the use of existing G5 squaring saws
- Increase of wafer slicing utilization and yield that maximize beam loading and minimize seams and edges.
