Midstream sectors began to have clear pricing as leading multi-Si wafer companies announced their latest price quotes. According to EnergyTrend’s observation, while the polysilicon market continued to witness rising prices, the multi-Si wafer market that suffered from price decline kept experiencing squeezed profit margin. On the other hand, due to the devaluation of the renminbi, PV cell prices in Taiwan and overseas declined more significantly than Chinese cell prices.
Although the review of China’s anti-dumping and countervailing duties imposed on overseas polysilicon imports may not have impact just yet, the Chinese polysilicon market experienced slight supply shortage because some makers couldn’t fill up their supplies after completing equipment maintenance and some have just started to lower production and conduct maintenance. The average trading price of polysilicon slowly reached RMB 140/kg. Overseas polysilicon prices are picking up as well. However, due to the decline in multi-Si wafer prices, polysilicon prices will peak in December and can no longer increase further in January 2017.
The decline of multi-Si wafer prices has led to lower overall prices. Due to the devaluation of the renminbi, Chinese multi-Si wafer prices dropped US$ 0.02/pc to US$ 0.65-0.66/pc in Taiwan, while prices stayed flat at US$ 0.67-0.68/pc for Taiwanese multi-Si wafers pressured by the rising polysilicon prices. Meanwhile, multi-Si wafer is priced at RMB 5.05-5.15/pc in the Chinese market. Since demand slightly lowered for downstream sectors, multi-Si wafer prices may decline further in the future. As for mono-Si wafers, prices will remain stable owing to strong end-user demand.
Since the decline of multi-Si cell prices in US dollars is more substantial than in renminbi, non-Chinese cells also saw significant decline in prices. The average trading price of high-efficiency cells dropped to US$ 0.23/W in Taiwan. This also affected the prices in countries outside of China and Taiwan. Although some manufacturers lowered cell prices slightly following the decline in wafer prices, the overall cell is priced at RMB 1.8-1.85/W.
For modules, despite the slight increase in Chinese prices, global module prices continued to reflect a downtrend due to weak trading volume during year-end holidays in the European and US markets. In addition, manufacturers have reported that prices will decline significantly in 1Q17; therefore the world is expecting weaker module prices in 2017.