JA Solar Vietnam Company Limited secured the seven year loan facility from China Minsheng Bank Corporation Limited Shijiazhuang Branch. It will use the funds to buy equipment for its 1.5 GW solar wafer facility, located in Bac Giang, Vietnam.
No further details were provided, and JA Solar could not be immediately reached for comment.
In November 2016, JA Solar announced it would set up shop in Vietnam with a $1 billion cell fab, and a $280 million wafer production plant, according to various media sources. While details were thin on the ground, it was said that the company was looking to avoid trade barriers in the U.S. and European solar markets. Both facilities were expected to be completed within three years.
Privatization
This March 13, JA Solar announced that its shareholders agreed to a proposed merger of JA Solar Holdings Co., Ltd with JASO Holdings and its wholly owned units, JASO Parent and JASO Acquisition, thus taking the manufacturer one step closer to privatization.
A week later, Herman Zhao resigned from his role as chief financial officer for personal reasons. This was followed a day later by a company statement refuting assertions made by SolarWorld that proprietary data obtained via “Chinese military hackers” had helped Chinese module manufacturers, including JA Solar, to greatly speed up their adoption of PERC production technology.
At the end of April, meanwhile, the manufacturer reported its FY 2017 financials, which saw declining profits despite strong shipments and sales. An outlook for the first quarter and full fiscal year 2018 was not provided.
According to its 2016 financials, by the end of 2017, however, the company had planned for wafer capacities of 3 GW, while it was targeting a 57 GW cell capacity, and a 6 GW module capacity. Headquartered in Beijing, JA Solar has four domestic manufacturing locations, in addition to operations in Malaysia and Vietnam.
pv magazine has contacted JA Solar to enquire about both its cell and wafer manufacturing plans in Vietnam, and also for comment on how it has been affected by China’s recent policy changes.
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.
1 comment
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.