Chinese producer of solar materials, GCL Technology Holdings Limited improved its annual revenues for 2022 by 113% to RMB 35.9 billion thanks to increase in selling prices for solar products as its shipments for polysilicon and silicon wafers rose by 96.4% and 21.7%, respectively.
In concrete terms, it shipped 93,900 metric ton (MT) polysilicon in 2022, comprising 12,239 MT sold internally, and its wafer shipment was 46.3 GW including OEM wafer of 27.7 GW. In the previous year, its polysilicon and wafer production was 47,804 MT and 38.05 GW, respectively.
As for production output, GCL produced 104,723 MT polysilicon—excluding 64,501 MT from associated companies, up 120% annually. This includes 59,124 MT rod and 45,599 granular silicon whose production improved 46.1% and 537.3% YoY, respectively. It rolled out 46.66 GW of silicon wafers representing an annual jump of 22.4%.
"For the year ended 31 December 2022, the company adopts the sales strategy of "same price for same quality" for rod silicon and granular silicon, and the average foreign selling price (excluding tax) of rod silicon was approximately RMB228.5 (equivalent to US$33.0) per kilogram," reads the GCL report.
To the overall revenues, solar material business contributed RMB 35.7 billion comprising RMB 17.66 billion from polysilicon and RMB 14.04 billion from wafers. Solar farm business segment added another RMB 216.97 million. However, geographically China was GCL's largest market bringing in RMB 35.25 billion in revenues while the rest RMB 672 million came from rest of the world.
Net profit of the company improved 215.3% annually to RMB 16.03 billion. Gross profit too rose 213.9% to RMB 17.5 billion. GCL's R&D investment last year went up by 61.96% to RMB 1.686 billion accounting for 4.59% of annual revenues.
Pointing at the protectionist policies in major solar markets and focus on domestic PV manufacturing in the US, India and European Union (EU), GCL called it both a challenge and an opportunity for Chinese companies. "Therefore, it is an important task and a severe challenge for China photovoltaic enterprises to steadily accelerate the strategic layout of overseas production capacity, broaden overseas financing channels, establish dialogues with global capital markets, and accelerate the absorption and training of international talents," reads GCL's report.
Since polysilicon and wafer are considered energy guzzling products, GCL says it optimized comprehensive power consumption of granular silicon to 13.8 kWh/kg-Si, and steam consumption to 15.3 kg/kg-Si in 2022, whereas the average comprehensive power consumption of polysilicon industry was 60 kWh/kg-Si, the average steam consumption was 15.0kg/kg-Si.
It added, "As the only raw material product that helps measure the carbon emission rights of the photovoltaic industry chain, the low-carbon property of granular silicon is a key link to optimize the full-scale carbon emission measurement of the photovoltaic industry, and also the core technology for the photovoltaic industry to implement technical carbon reduction." Additionally, the management said, "According to the 2022 granular silicon output of 45,598 metric tons, the company can save 2.1 billion kWh of electricity for China and reduce 1.18 million tons of carbon emissions for the industry."
At the end of 2022, GCL's total polysilicon production capacity was 185,000 MT including 140,000 MT granular silicon. Management said it is still releasing granular silicon production capacity with effective capacity of 180,000 MT and total effective polysilicon production capacity of 225,000 MT.
For silicon wafers, its cumulative capacity increased to 55 GW. Siemens rod silicon production capacity was 45,000 MT.
Going forward, management said the company will withdraw from Siemens rod silicon production in an orderly manner while realizing CCZ process mass production and perovskite technology commercialization.