The trend of Chinese cell and module manufacturers adding capacity in Southeast Asia continues to gain momentum, with Trina the latest to announce a new facility. Trina will establish the subsidiary Trina Solar Science and Technology in Thailand for its new operations.
Thailand is an ideal location for us to build a new manufacturing base due to its proximity to key emerging markets in the Asia Pacific region as well as its favorable investment environment in terms of land acquisition and labor costs, said Zhiguo Zhu, COO and president of module business unit of Trina Solar. We believe diversifying our global manufacturing capacity will allow us to better leverage resources more cost effectively, enhance our competitiveness in overseas markets and enable us to increase our global market share.
Major drivers behind the Chinese manufacturers move into Southeast Asia are the trade barriers currently affecting their exports to both the EU and U.S.
Thailand is also a particularly attractive PV market given its sunny environment, long-term PV subsidies, and favorable government policies towards the solar sector, said Zhiguo Zhu.
Thailands PV market has shown positive momentum of late, despite the political turmoil that has plagued the country. BNEF figures show that Thailand saw annual installations grow from around 450 MW in 2013 to a predicted 600 MW in 2015.
In the region Malaysia has become a major PV manufacturing hub for manufacturers including First Solar, Hanwha Q Cells and JinkoSolar. In Malaysia manufacturers can avail themselves of a 10-year tax holiday making it an additionally attractive location.
There is, however, growing sentiment that manufacturers operating in Malaysia may end up becoming embroiled in similar trade disputes to those that have affected Chinese and Taiwanese solar cell and module exports. There have been informal reports that rival manufacturers, such as SolarWorld, have begun investigations as to the validity of anti-dumping and other similar claims could be raised in international trade bodies as a result of the Malaysian subsidies.
Trina expects its Thailand production site to begin turning out cells and modules towards the end of this year or early next.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.