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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | September 21, 2017 |
After an explosion took place at Wacker’s US factory on September 8th, polysilicon prices slightly increased in the overseas markets. Yet due to the weaker price trends of cells and modules, it’s difficult for wafers to reflect the rising costs in the overseas, leading to squeezing profits.
Poly
Wacker has begun to increase the polysilicon prices in non-Chinese regions after the productions are temporarily suspended at its US factory. Other overseas polysilicon makers followed suit. This resulted in higher polysilicon stock and long-term contract prices in the overseas. Yet, the price gap is quite large among polysilicon makers, leading to chaotic pricing. Polysilicon prices haven’t been affected much in China though, reaching RMB 147-150/kg.
Wafer
More and more cell productions lines have been switched to diamond wire multi-Si wafers, leading to continuous short supply of diamond wire multi-Si wafers this week. The supply of slurry multi-Si wafers is abundant. It’s estimated that the demands for slurry will drop rapidly in Q4. The price gap between slurry and diamond wire multi-Si wafers is worth paying attention to in October.
Cell
Cell makers are in wait-and-see mode this week, with the prices mostly staying flat. The average trading price of cells reached RMB 1.74-1.75/W in China, US$ 0.234-0.235/W in Taiwan, and US$ 0.25-0.255/W in third-party countries.
Module
The module market saw stable prices recently. However, the latest minimum import price (MIP) has been released in Europe. Not just the prices have been lowered; there is different MIP for mono/multi-Si cells and modules, allowing Chinese makers that were originally in the MIP list to use the lower prices to ship to Europe in October this year. It’s projected that module prices in Europe will slightly decline. But some of the details of the latest MIP are yet to be clear. Whether Chinese makers can use lower MIP to increase the shipment to Europe remains to be seen.