Energy & Chemicals

Analysis on Import of Polysilicon in China

Yuwenhao, , ,

China’s production capacity of photovoltaics components accounts for around 70% of the globe, and silicon wafer processing is also in great demand. However, production volume of polysilicon in China only constitutes 50% of the globe. Domestic polysilicon cannot bridge the demand gap of downstream enterprises for raw materials, leading to the continuous increasing import volume of polysilicon in China.

Import of polysilicon is featured as:

  1. Major import source countries are South Korea, Germany and the U.S. In the last three years, import volume from the three countries has been almost 80% of total import volume.
  2. Proportion of imported polysilicon from South Korea is increasing year by year. In 2016, it was close to 50%.
  3. Trade barrier of polysilicon between China and the U.S. led to new record of low import volume from America.

In recent years, America launched many anti-dumping and anti-bribery investigations on Chinese photovoltaic products and charged high anti-dumping duties and anti-bribery taxes. AS a way of counterattack, China collect 53.3% ~ 57.0% anti-dumping duty from major American polysilicon manufacturers; in addition, due to the fact that polysilicon products imported from America are mostly processing trade, Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China published No.58 Document to suspend the processing of polysilicon processing trade applications from America and South Korea, resulting in impact on American polysilicon products to China.

It is estimated that downstream enterprises in the industry chain of photovoltaics (crystalline silicon) will maintain high demands, therefore we still need to import large amount of polysilicon from overseas.

 

Reference:

Research Report on China Polysilicon Industry, 2017-2021

Export to emerging markets like India, Turkey, Chile and Pakistan significantly increased while that of occident traditional markets decline to below 30%.