Last year, GCL-Poly achieved revenue of 23.7 billion CNY (US$3.72 billion), which was up 8% compared to 22 billion CNY, a year earlier.
Net profit for 2017, however, dropped 1.4% to 2.2 billion CNY ($348.3 million). The company added that its profit in the solar material segment dropped 45.5%, while its new energy segment performed a remarkable 249.9% increase in earnings.
Most of the turnover for last year came from its solar material business, which accounted for 19.3 billion CNY in sales, while the solar farm business and the new energy segment registered sales of 497.1 million CNY and 4.7 billion CNY, respectively.
As for the sale of PV materials, wafer sales comprised the largest share with 17.4 billion CNY, while sales for polysilicon amounted to 766.4 million CNY.
As for its operational results, GCL-Poly was able to produce 74,818 MT of polysilicon (up 7.9% year-on-year) and 23,902 MW of wafers (up 37.9% year-on-year) in 2017. The company’s annual polysilicon production capacity at the end of last was 70,000 MT, while wafer capacity reached 30 GW. In comparison, wafer capacity at the end of 2016 was 18.5 GW.
Polysilicon capacity, on the other hand, is expected to further increase, as GCL-Poly started construction on a new 20,000 MT production facility in Xinjiang. The new factory, the company stressed, is planned to have a 40,000 MT capacity; 20,000 MT of capacity at existing Xuzhou facilities will be relocated to the new facility. The company aims to ramp up its annual polysilicon production capacity from 70,000 MT to 115,000 MT to meet the increasing demand by 2020.
Demand for solar material products was particularly strong from mid-April to the end of the third quarter, the company said in its statement.
It also explained that its ingot pulling capacity was significantly improved last year, as it gradually replaced it G7 ingot casting furnaces with G8 without purchasing new equipment, and crystalline structure was optimized through thermal field optimization.
As part of the innovation plan, GCL-Poly also adopted a diamond-wire sawing technology, while launching new black silicon products.
Furthermore, it acquired part of Sunedison’s manufacturing business. “In terms of CCZ constant czochralski monosilicon, we leveraged the leading technologies of SunEdison to promote the development of heat-shielding technology with low energy consumption, high speed of ingot pulling and large feed capacity as well as the optimization of ancillary facilities.
“The latest technology and equipment to be adopted by polysilicon base in Xinjiang which is under construction will fully satisfy the demand for CCZ constant czochralski monosilicon and N-type monosilicon materials, and surpass the current quality level, while achieving the lowest cost over the World,” GCL-Poly explained.
The company’s GCL New Energy unit, which is active in the development of large-scale PV projects and in the sale of solar power, reached a total installed operational capacity of 5,990 MW (up 70% year-on-year) at the end of 2017. Revenue, meanwhile, increased by 75.5% to 3.4 billion CNY last year, while its profit rose by 249.9%.
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