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| Author | InfoLink |
| Updated | February 14, 2019 |
Poly Price
Most of the polysilicon orders have been confirmed before the Lunar New Year, and thus prices in February will basically stay stable. For small transaction, mono wafer use price has slightly increased, which is a reflection of the optimism before the Lunar New Year. The mainstream average trading price of mono wafer use polysilicon reached RMB 81/kg. Price of multi wafer use polysilicon has returned to the price level of mid-January. The mainstream price of multi wafer use polysilicon reached RMB 70-71/kg. For the overseas, price of mono wafer use polysilicon increased US$ 0.1/kg while that of multi wafer use remained flat.
Wafer Price
Since top-tier makers took the lead to increase multi wafer prices and the production of multi wafers has dropped significantly in February due to the Lunar New Year, multi wafer prices continued to rise this week, reaching RMB 2.1-2.15/piece. For mono wafer, prices for February have continually been confirmed. Prices of small orders on spot market have scaled up to RMB 3.25/piece.
It appears that demand in late-February will remain flat. But as mono wafer makers continued to put into production, mono wafer price in late-February will have to depend on the demand in March and April. For multi wafer, if no more small-scale manufacturers release new capacities, price can remain flat or even increase in early-March.
Cell Price
As India and Japan entered the peak season in Q1, the multi cell sector is likely to continuously witness strong demand before mid-March. In addition, during the Lunar New Year, almost all cell makers have put their labors in mono PERC production lines, leading to significantly lower multi cell production in February. This also made the multi cell sector to witness tighter supply than the mono cell sector after the Lunar New Year.
The balanced supply and demand relationship for multi products is created by low utilization rate. Despite the tight supply, multi cell price can’t grow further based on the current module price. Therefore, multi cell price remained stable at RMB 0.88-0.9/W and US$ 0.115/W. Meanwhile, multi cell in Southeast Asia stood at US$ 0.12/W owing to the installation boom in India.
The SE-PERC cell market continued to witness strong demand in January for both China and the overseas. Yet, since mono PERC cell prices have increased significantly over the past three months, price in late-January wasn’t affected by the rising wafer prices. Price of cell with an efficiency of 21.5% stayed flat at RMB 1.29-1.3/W.
Although the mono PERC cell market saw high order visibility, new capacities will be released continually. If the overall demand drops in March and April, mono PERC price may decline slightly in March. Meanwhile, multi cell makers may see a turning point after India made less procurement. Therefore, manufacturers are still in wait-and-see mode for March price.
Module Price
For module price, as the Lunar New Year ended, there weren’t many new orders signed. This led to barely any fluctuation in prices. The PERC module market continued to see high prices. However, after peak season ends in India in Q1, multi module prices may slightly decline from March to Q2.