According to EnergyTrend’s latest survey, polysilicon spot price trend remains going upward. Currently, the main trading price is between $53/kg and $55/kg. Manufacturers indicated that the polysilicon spot price has shown a strong increase, primarily due to the rising Chinese market demand. On the other hand, electricity shortage occurred in Eastern China, and the industrial sector may be influenced in the future. Therefore, polysilion production output might be limited, which will also stimulate the Chinese market demand. In addition, due to high demand for mono-Si wafer, the average spot price has stayed at above $2.6/piece. Furthermore, the main trading price of multi-Si wafer is between $2.0/piece and $2.1/piece. Although manufacturers pointed out that they wished their clients could share the reduced profit due to current market situation, clients refuse to accept price increase at this stage. Unless a large number of contingent orders take place, the possibility of price recovery is quite low. Therefore, the price changes may just fluctuate slightly in the short run.
According EnergyTrend, the average price of polysilicon has increased by 4.81% to $53.73/kg. The average prices of multi-Si wafer and mono-Si wafer have respectively risen by 1.16% and 0.19% to $2.014/piece and $2.631/piece. On the other hand, the spot price of solar price has shown a slight change as well. Due to the increasing demand for high conversion efficiency product, the sales price has stayed at a high level. However, for products of which conversion efficiency is below 16.5%, the trading price ranges from $0.78/Watt to $0.8/Watt, and average price has risen by 0.38% to $0.784/Watt. Furthermore, the average price of module has merely declined by 0.39% to $1.288/Watt. Manufacturers indicated that the inventory clearance is still in process, the demand has not obviously picked up yet. Therefore, the price trend reversal is still simmering.
According to current market situation, oversupply remains. Since GCL and OCI have announced that they will follow through the original expansion plans, the total combined annual capacity will increase from 4.8K to 8.8K tons, which equal to 1.7 pieces of 6” Si wafer (200μm) or equal to 6.8 GW solar cell. In addition, due to low sales price, Si wafer manufacturers will face the net loss. Under this circumstance, Si wafer manufacturers will mix low grade material to reduce production cost, so the regular polysilicon shipment is lower than what would have been required. EnergyTrend believes that the polysilicon oversupply might happen in the future, and the price will be further adjusted. Hence downstream manufacturers might benefit from decreased polysilicon price. However, as for Taiwanese polysilicon manufacturers, whose capacity scale and cost competiveness are generally inferior less than those of Chinese, Korean, and other international giants, so they might face a more serious challenge when the price adjustment of polysilicon takes place.
