JA Solar expects minimum disruption from cell fab fire, signs 50 MW supply deal

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Vertically integrated Chinese solar company JA Solar has confirmed that a fire broke out on July 13 at its Yangzhou cell production facility, Jiangsu province.

The fire was first reported at 1:32am Beijing time, and extinguished at around 6:00am, JA Solar says. No casualties or injuries resulted from the incident, which struck old production lines first installed in 2009 and already scheduled – the company says – for replacement within the next 12 months.

Hence, JA Solar moved to reassure its customers that interruption to its cell production output at the site is expected to be minimal, estimating that the fire damaged 6% of its total cell production capacity.

The cause of the fire remains unknown, but is being investigated.

50 MW supply deal
In cheerier news, JA Solar revealed today that it had signed a 50 MW module supply deal in Malaysia – its first such utility-scale contract in the southeast Asian country.

The JA Solar percium mono modules are to be shipped to a PV project located in Sabah. The large-scale solar farm has garnered a lot of attention in Malaysia, and is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

“We have invested $163 million in our Penang, Malaysia manufacturing operation to produce multi- and mono-cells with the annual capacity of 100 MW,” said JA Solar VP Cao Bo. “From the China-Malaysia standpoint, investing in manufacturing facilities and sharing our technical expertise in Malaysia, a rapidly growing market, remains our top priority.”

The developer is SPIC Energy Malaysia Sdn. Bhd, which is a subsidiary of Malaysia’s State Power Investment Corporation.

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