Last week, there were two headlines for solar industry on both positive and negative sides – the positive one was that China officially announced its new PV system installation target of 14GW in 2014, which represented a strong market demand; the negative one was that the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) had filed SolarWorld’s petition against dumping and subsidies.
Taiwanese manufacturers hold conservative attitudes toward shipments after Chinese Lunar New Year due to the US-China trade war and the end of fiscal year in Japan. However, according to EnergyTrend, a research division of TrendForce, major Chinese and Taiwanese manufacturers still maintain regular shipment while some of them even accelerate shipments to the US and Japan. Thus, sales revenue can still be high in February. It’s projected that the US-China trade war’s impact on Taiwanese manufacutrers won’t begin to show until March.
ITC today announced that Taiwanese and Chinese PV products exported to the U.S. have caused substantial damages to the U.S. PV industry. Henceforth, DOC will take over the following administrative processes and announce the anti-subsidy and anti-dumping tariffs by the end of March and mid-June, respectively.
EnergyTrend, a research division of TrendForce, indicates that although the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) proclaimed that Europe’s solar-grade poly imports counted as “product dumping” and it caused substantial damages to Chinese poly industry, the Chinese government decided not to impose anti-dumping tariff on European poly imports. EnergyTrend believes that this will help European manufacturers to maintain their market share in the Chinese market in 2014. It can also give pressures to the ongoing USA-China trade war.
Since Taiwan’s first-tier cell manufacturers achieved full-production status in 2H13 and second-tier manufacturers increased cell shipment, total cell shipment in Taiwan reached a new high in 2013. EnergyTrend, a research division of TrendForce, indicates that the annual shipment growth rate was 42% in 2013 for Taiwan’s cell manufacturers, with total shipment exceeding 8.3GW. As for individual Taiwanese manufacturers, shipment of Motech, Neo Solar Power, and Gintech all surpassed 1GW. NSP only covered the shipment since June, 2013, when they acquired DelSolar. Thus, Motech was still the Taiwanese cell manufacturer with the largest shipment in 2013. But it’s possible to be replaced by NSP in 2014. Overall, the total shipment for the top three manufacturers is likely to represent around 55% of the total shipment in Taiwan.
