1. Development of the global polysilicon industry in 2023
By the end of 2023, the global total polysilicon production capacity will be approximately 2.458 million tons/year, an increase of 83.3% year-on-year; in 2023, the global polysilicon output will be approximately 1.608 million tons, an increase of approximately 60.6% year-on-year, of which: electronic-grade polysilicon output will be approximately 38,800 tons, solar-grade block silicon will be approximately 1.349 million tons, and granular silicon will be approximately 220,000 tons, accounting for 2.4%, 83.9% and 13.7% of the global polysilicon total output respectively.
In 2023, the total production capacity of the world's top ten polysilicon companies will reach 1.945 million tons/year, accounting for 79.13% of the world's total production capacity, an increase of 72% from 1.131 million tons/year in 2022. The total output of the world's top ten polysilicon companies will be about 1.46 million tons, accounting for 90.8% of the world's total output, an increase of 54.76% from 943,400 tons in 2022. In 2023, the world's top five polysilicon companies will all be concentrated in China, with a total output of 1.12 million tons, accounting for about 69.7% of the world's total output, and a high degree of production concentration.
2. Development of my country's polysilicon industry in 2023
In 2023, there are 22 polysilicon enterprises in production in China, including 5 new entrants. In addition, GCL Technology sold its shares in Xinjiang Goens to become an independent enterprise. The effective production capacity of polysilicon in China is 2.3 million tons/year, an increase of 97.2% year-on-year. The national polysilicon output is about 1.472 million tons, an increase of 71.8% year-on-year. The increase in production capacity mainly comes from the commissioning of new production lines such as Tongwei, GCL, Xinte Energy, Qinghai Lihao, and Asia Silicon. In the first half of 2023, driven by factors such as market supply and demand and high prices, polysilicon enterprises in production are trying to improve capacity utilization, so the output of several enterprises exceeds the nominal capacity.
In 2023, all links of the photovoltaic industry chain will accelerate the expansion of production, and the expansion of silicon wafers in the downstream of polysilicon will accelerate. Downstream demand stimulates the upstream polysilicon link to respond actively. By the end of 2023, China's total effective polysilicon production capacity will reach a record 2.3 million tons/year. These key polysilicon production areas are in Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Qinghai, Sichuan, Ningxia, Gansu and Yunnan. Some companies started the construction of the second phase project at the same time as the first phase was put into production. According to the progress of each company's engineering construction, equipment ordering, installation, technical team status, etc., it is estimated that the total production capacity will exceed 3.1 million tons/year in 2024. It is preliminarily estimated that the supply of polysilicon in 2024 will reach 1.6 million tons to 1.8 million tons, equivalent to a photovoltaic silicon wafer production of about 700GW.
In terms of imports, in 2023, my country's imports of solar-grade polysilicon will be approximately US$1.434 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 44.4%. With the expansion of domestic polysilicon production capacity, the demand for polysilicon imports has begun to decline. In 2023, the import volume of polysilicon will be approximately 57,000 tons, a year-on-year decrease of 34.5%. Due to the increase in domestic polysilicon supply, the proportion of imports in domestic polysilicon consumption has gradually decreased. In 2023, imported polysilicon accounted for approximately 3.7% of domestic consumption, a year-on-year decrease of 5.8 percentage points. In the past decade, the dependence of polysilicon on imports has decreased year by year.
Source：CPIA