Most polysilicon makers in SW China suspend production

BEIJING -- Southwest China's Sichuan province has seen most of its polysilicon factories suspend their productions due to the sliding product price which has dropped below production cost.

As investors are seeking new opportunities in China's expanding solar PV market, the clock is ticking for many polysilicon makers to find a way out from the mess of overcapacity and disorderly competition.

As the most concentrated region for polysilicon manufacturing in China, Sichuan has approximately 10 polysilicon enterprises of which 6 are on the list of qualified companies that passed the industry access threshold set by Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) in December 2011.

However, only two companies, including Sichuan Yongxiang Co., Ltd and Sichuan ReneSolar, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ReneSola Ltd (SOL.NYSE), a leading global manufacturer of solar products, are still maintaining productions.

Overheated investment in recent years has led to overcapacity and disorderly competition in the domestic market. On the outside, the European debt crisis, shrinking demand from the European countries as well as the anti-dumping and countervailing investigation from the United States further strike the sector towards a dimmer prospect, said a former manager with a polysilicon company in Sichuan.

Industry observers noted that a wave of industry reshuffle would soon come and at the meantime, domestic market should be further expanded in a bid to provide more opportunities for the polysilicon sector in the future. (Edited by Niu Huizhe, niuhuizhe@xinhua.org)