Global polysilicon supplier to the PV industry Tongwei Co., Ltd. announced a strategic arrangement with another PV industry heavyweight from China JinkoSolar to jointly invest in solar wafer and polysilicon production capacity.
In a stock exchange filing, Tongwei explained they will achieve this capacity addition with JinkoSolar investing in Tongwei's planned 45,000 MT polysilicon facility. In December 2020, Tongwei said it plans set to come up in Inner Mongolia with a 35% equity participation (see China PV Snippets: Sungrow, Gaojing, Tongwei, GCL).
On the other hand, Tongwei will pick up a 30% stake in JinkoSolar's planned 15 GW monocrystalline silicon wafer project. In addition, JinkoSolar will supply Tongwei with 6.5 GW of silicon wafers for 3 years, between 2021 and 2023. As a leading cell manufacturer Tongwei obviously has huge demand for silicon wafers (see Tongwei Leads PV InfoLink's 2020 Cell Shipment Ranking). In November 2020, JinkoSolar signed a long-term purchase agreement with Tongwei to purchase close to 100,000 MT polycrystalline silicon.
In the announcement, Tongwei explained the cooperation will further strengthen the resource sharing and integration in the PV industry chain, while consolidating the dominant position of both parties.
This agreement with JinkoSolar comes on the heels of Tongwei announcing a joint venture with Trina Solar in November 2020 to jointly produce 40,000 tons of polysilicon as well as to manufacture 15 GW each of ingots, wafer cutting and high efficiency crystalline silicon cell capacity (see Tongwei & Trina Solar Joint Venture For 210 Products).
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