China's PV firms aim to enlarge global footprint

The photovoltaic industry will increasingly develop towards "global manufacture and global selling", Yicai reported on Thursday.

The pattern of "made in China, sold worldwide" is now facing a great challenge, said Gao Jifan, chairman of Trina Solar Co, a leading Chinese photovoltaics company. China's photovoltaic products are exported to nearly 200 countries, but in the past, Chinese manufacturing was the main body, accounting for about 80 percent of global output.

Since the beginning of this year, leading enterprises have announced the construction of factories overseas one after another.

At the end of May, TCL Zhonghuan announced the signing of a cooperation agreement with Vision Industries Company to establish a joint venture company and carry out a photovoltaic chip factory project in Saudi Arabia.

As early as January, JA Solar invested $60 million (427 million yuan) in the construction of a factory with an annual capacity of 2GW of components in Phoenix, Arizona, which is scheduled to be put into operation in the fourth quarter of this year. In March, Longi set up its first plant in the United States, and cooperated with local clean energy developer Invenergy to build a 5GW photovoltaic module plant in Ohio. The project construction was scheduled to start in April, and is expected to be in operation by the end of 2023.

"Due to the influence of geopolitics, many companies plan to build factories in other countries. The original intention of these companies to build plants in Canada, Brazil and Indonesia is based on the consideration of local market access, and to build a plant in Thailand is mainly for the US market," Xiong Haibo, vice-president of operations of PV module company Canadian Solar, said.