What was the impetus behind JinkoSolar's joint venture to open a factory in Saudi Arabia?
Qian: As the trend-setting solar PV and storage maker, JinkoSolar has chosen Saudi Arabia as the site for its fourth overseas facility. Governments in MENA countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, have ambitious climate targets, concrete big actions, and outstanding market potential. JinkoSolar’s already achieved 70% market share there. Additionally, the relatively good industry infrastructure, green power supply offered at the lowest cost, and high country credit are other reasons why we are locating our next overseas factory in Saudi Arabia.
We see the Saudi Arabia factory is another milestone or turning point of JinkoSolar's globalization mode, accelerating the shift from global sales to global production, from exporting products only to exporting technology, experience, expertise, service, and talents. It is a shift from a wholly owned investment structure to a joint venture that can scale up rapidly.
JinkoSolar believes the move into Saudi Arabia will allow it to operate closer to its customer base and help streamline manufacturing processes. Ultimately, a solar and ESS company with global market ambitions has to have its manufacturing footprint spread around the world.
With manufacturing facilities in China, Asia, North America, and the Middle East to serve those major regional markets, JinkoSolar can build a more balanced manufacturing network and improve our logistics and distribution processes.
How soon will the factory be operational, and what is the timeline for ramping up production?
Qian: It is planned to be operational in Q1 2026, and by the end of 2026, it is expected to ramp up to its full capacity of 10 GW for TOPCon cells of 27% efficiency and 10 GW for modules.
Can you explain how JinkoSolar's smart factory concept will be implemented in this project?
Qian: It will be a fully autonomous factory, fully automated with the least amount of human intervention. It’s not only in consideration of production speed or labor cost, it is rather for quality assurance consistency. In addition to automatic lines and autonomous transporting vehicles, robotic automation will be deployed within a defined set of processes, such as picking raw material and placing it on the assembly line. Then it will expand to multiple functions and processes, such as combining the raw material and packaging the product. Meanwhile, it will for the first time apply robotic coworkers and adaptive AI as human assistants in Saudi Arabia's smart factory, which will help us to drive ahead of others in the future.
Image: JinkoSolar
How did JinkoSolar select its partners – PIF Public Investment Fund and VI Vision Industries Company – for this joint venture (JV)?
Qian: PIF and VI are the ironically prestigious giants in their fields respectively, incredibly resourceful and influential in Saudi Arabia and pan Middle East regions. Partnering with them will tremendously facilitate our operation and smooth the rollout of this investment. Through JV mode, we can maximize each other’s strength to get win-win-win results.
What are the challenges and opportunities of building a module manufacturing facility in Saudi Arabia?
Qian: The challenges come from access to a sufficiently skilled workforce, engineers, reliable and low-cost supply chain, culture difference, a not-yet-matured ecosystem, as well as the joint venture model itself. Long-term challenges include how to successfully bring the Saudi Arabia manufacturing plant on stream, ensuring a smooth production rollout for the 27% efficiency TOPCon products, and maintaining that factory on a path to positive cash-flow and profitability.
Regarding opportunities, Saudi Arabia is positioned at the heart of the Middle East’s renewable industry and market, it also has an established industry cluster near NEOM city and indications from local government that it will be very supportive in encouraging renewables.
Is there anything else you would like to mention with regard to this joint venture?
Qian: To use JinkoSolar’s rich engineering resources and talent pool, together with the diversified competence of PIF and VI, this innovative JV investment structure will bring a less expensive but highly qualified modern renewable energy facility to the heart of the Middle East. The huge amount of value in JinkoSolar’s technology and manufacturing that the local supply chain can draw upon, as well as the “Made in World” tag, will carry significant weight for the JinkoSolar brand.
The questions and responses in this sponsored interview article were provided by JinkoSolar.
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.