Taiwan's Gigastorage, a maker of optical discs as well as solar-grade silicon wafers, has stated that its production of solar wafers has not been affected by recent demand and price falls. With a relatively small production capacity of 100MW a year, the company is still running at full capacity.
Gigastorage procures most of its polysilicon from the spot market, hence the recent fall of spot price for polysilicon has been helping Gigastorage lower its costs for producing solar wafers. Gigastorage stated the current price of polysilicon is around US$60/kg and has been asking for even lower prices. Therefore, even if the price of solar wafers decrease, the decrease of the cost for producing solar wafer can compensate the losses incurred.
Gigastorage said it plans to expand its solar wafer capacity from 100MW to 300MW in July-August, added Gigastorage.
By June, the German market should begin to lower inventory stocks, said Gigastorage.
Prices of solar wafers have been decreasing.
Photo: Terry Ku, Digitimes, May 2011
Article translated by Jackie Chang
