PVinsights: Disappointed Demand Forces Suppliers to Conform

Polysilicon prices remain stable following the gain before lunar New Year, as disappointing result of price negotiation in downstream raises doubts about the strength of demand. As polysilicon prices in China hit near the saturation points, there is not much rooms for polysilicon suppliers to improve the prices. In addition, as the demand after lunar New Year holiday seems weaker than anticipated, there are also no driving forces to push up the price further. While the price rally in China tempers, polysilicon suppliers in overseas also tend to stabilize their prices as well. As the result, overall polysilicon prices stay unchanged this week.

Polysilicon prices remain stable following the gain before lunar New Year, as disappointing result of price negotiation in downstream raises doubts about the strength of demand. As polysilicon prices in China hit near the saturation points, there is not much rooms for polysilicon suppliers to improve the prices. In addition, as the demand after lunar New Year holiday seems weaker than anticipated, there are also no driving forces to push up the price further. While the price rally in China tempers, polysilicon suppliers in overseas also tend to stabilize their prices as well. As the result, overall polysilicon prices stay unchanged this week.


Multi-crystalline wafer prices stabilize this week. Although major multi-crystalline wafer makers increased price quotes before the lunar New Year, the attempts have failed after the holidays, since the demand is not as good as they had anticipated and the bargaining power of the major buyers eventually wins this battles. Major multi-crystalline wafer suppliers have to comply with the requests of buyers to set the deals lower, which resulted immobile prices this week. On the other hand, due to persistent supply shortage of mono-crystalline wafers, the 1st tier mono-crystalline wafer suppliers are trying to avoid the price gap enlarge with multi-ones in prevention of demand shift. Hence, the prices of mono-crystalline wafer remain stable this week. Such attempt by mono-crystalline wafer suppliers also implies that the ability of multi-crystalline price improvement would be hard to achieve as the available sources of multi-crystalline wafers in the market remain quite sufficient.

Both prices of multi-crystalline and mono-crystalline cells stay firm this week. While midstream suppliers are expecting price and demand to come back after the holiday, the major buyers are still waiting for prices to settle at a reasonable level. Regardless of the risk of depressed module prices, solar cell suppliers seems overly optimistic on expected rebound, especially from some leading solar cell makers. Major solar cell suppliers even start to prepare one-week inventories ahead, as they anticipate further price improvement. However, since the downstream module prices continue to perform poorly, the solar cell buyers have to reduce the solar cell prices or cut the procurement volumes in order to accommodate with the surge of price quotes. Therefore, with the pressures from increased inventory level and weak-than-anticipated demand, some solar cell suppliers have reduced the prices to secure the orders, and some still in a stalemate with major buyers, which result a flat-line multi-crystalline cell prices this week. As for mono-crystalline cell, the price quotes have exceeded the budget of most solar cell purchasers. The market of mono-crystalline cell also starts to shrink due to lack of mono-crystalline wafer and the elevated prices. Hence, some mono-crystalline cell buyers also intend to take wait-and-see approach since mono-crystalline cell prices are hardly affordable for them. As the result, mono-crystalline cell prices halt steady this week.

Solar panel price slide continuously this week due to persistent price competition and weaker-than-expected demand after lunar New Year holiday. The demand in China after lunar New Year is not as good as suppliers had anticipated, as recent released project tender have seen module prices to decline continuously. As for overseas market, the persistent price competition lead solar panel prices in EU and US to drop this week. On the other hand, despite the solid demand, solar panel price in India remain on gradual descent with persistent pricing pressure. As the result, the downtrend of global solar panel prices would be hard to reverse as global glut lingers.

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