PVinsights : Lower-than-expected demand empowers the poly-silicon price correction.

The unexpected slow demand and the aggressive price competition accelerate poly-silicon price downtrend. At the moment, China domestic demand seems to perform lower than expected. Without the strong demand recovery, Non-Chinese poly-silicon manufacturers, especially American, are still doing the price competition and dumping their products in the market, due to their concerns on the upcoming Chinese anti-dumping final ruling.

The unexpected slow demand and the aggressive price competition accelerate poly-silicon price downtrend. At the moment, China domestic demand seems to perform lower than expected. Without the strong demand recovery, Non-Chinese poly-silicon manufacturers, especially American, are still doing the price competition and dumping their products in the market, due to their concerns on the upcoming Chinese anti-dumping final ruling. Chinese poly-silicon manufacturers are conservative to the price competition but have to follow up the price downtrend as well. As such, overall poly-silicon price has experienced a relatively serious downtrend this week.


This week, module price continuously declines further because the ongoing demand recovery is lower than expected. In China, the financial support is not good enough to speed up solar installations. Since there is no meaningful demand improvement, solar module price goes down consecutively in China. Moreover, some second or third tier Chinese module suppliers tend to engage in furious price competition in the emerging markets, like India and Southeast Asia. On the other hand, the appreciation of the EUR against the USD helps the price in Europe relatively stable in USD term. In Japan, the continuous slow season induces huge pressure on module price. With the global price downtrend, US solar panel buyers ask module suppliers to follow the trend and to offer lower module price. As a result, all PV module prices descend this week.

Overall cell prices remain bearish this week. Lots of solar PV cell players are still suffering from the low order visibilities so as to adjust their price quotes down further. Although some major Taiwanese solar cell manufacturers have obtained certain orders to fulfill their production output and cut down their price mildly. Moreover, some Chinese PV cell makers employ tactical pricing strategies to build the strategically relationships with some solar players. This also drives solar cell price down. With the limited demand recovery, solar cell price falls down this week.

Wafer prices drop more severely this week, when major Chinese solar wafer makers have the serious price reduction. Major Chinese solar wafer makers expected that China domestic demand should have a strong recovery in May, but now this became unlikely. However, with the expectation, major wafer makers are carrying on lots of inventories since 4Q14. These inventories become a key driving force to push this price amendment. Therefore, overall wafer price decreases noticeably this week.

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