Some of the companies in the global solar supply chain at present that stand to gain from the tight supply of raw material of course include solar glass makers like Xinyi Solar. Higher sales volume and higher average selling price (ASP) of PV glass during the reporting quarter helped the Chinese glass manufacturer to grow it annual revenues for H1/2021 by 74.7% to HKD 8,074.9 million.
To these group revenues, solar glass sales contributed 81.7% with HKD 6,597.7 million, reflecting an annual increase of 89.2% for this segment. Remaining revenues were contributed by its solar farm business with HKD 1.477.2 million, growing 30.1% over H1/2020 (see Xinyi Solar's Net Profit 47.6% Up In H1/2020).
Major customers for the company's solar glass products during H1/2021 were in China – revenues for this segment comprised 68.1% business from Mainland China, while 31.9% came from rest of the world. Its Guangxi production site is now catering to customers from Southeast Asia and India.
Among other reasons, the annual growth in Xinyi Solar's solar glass business was also due to the company's enhanced production capacity as it added 2 new solar glass production lines with a daily melting capacity of 1,000 tons each in operation, taking the group's aggregate melting capacity of solar glass to 11,800 tons a day as at June 30, 2021.
It also experienced increased sales of new products as thin glass and large-format glass, pointing towards the growing market of large format sized modules.
Average market price of mainstream 3.2 mm solar glass grew by around 14% in H1/2021 over annual basis.
Production capacity
Going forward, Xinyi Solar said it will continue to expand its production capacity for 2021 in the form of 4 new solar glass production lines with a daily melting capacity of 1,000 ton each in Wuhu of Anhui province. Out of these 4, 3 lines have already commenced trial production in January 2021, March 2021 and July 2021. The 4th production line is scheduled to start trial operation in September 2021.
In addition, Xinyi Solar said it has construction of another 16 new solar glass production lines in the pipeline, each with a daily melting capacity of 1,000 tons, out of which 4 in Zhangjiagang in Jiangsu province and 4 in Wuhu in Anhui province are expected to be completed in 2022. The other 8 new production lines in Wuhu, Anhui are yet to be scheduled for commissioning. The management will constantly review and adjust its expansion plan according to changing market conditions.
The management points towards the 'inflated polysilicon and other component costs' having 'suppressed the growth momentum of downstream demand'. Coupled with the release of new industrial supply of solar glass, there was a substantial drop in solar glass prices in Q2/2021.
However, this is no worry for one of the world's largest solar glass suppliers as the management explained. "The price adjustments in the solar glass market in 1H2021 would not be a bad news for the Group, particularly from the perspective of its long-term development, because the adjustments would cause industry players to expand their production scale more rationally, and given the plummeting market prices and the normalized profit margins, some of the expansion plans may be postponed, downsized or even cancelled," it said.