In 2022, China produced an 83 percent share of the world's polysilicon, making it by far the world's largest producer of the high purity form of silicon. Germany's polysilicon production came. Contact online >>
In 2022, China produced an 83 percent share of the world''s polysilicon, making it by far the world''s largest producer of the high purity form of silicon. Germany''s polysilicon production came...
In terms of output, the global production of polysilicon in 2023 was about 1.6 million tons, with China''s production accounting for more than 80%, ranking first globally for fourteen consecutive years and exceeding 50% of the global share for eight consecutive years.
Who are the world''s top 10 polysilicon manufacturers? ⭐ How far have China''s largest producers caught up? ️ Get the ranking now!
In 2021, China accounted for the largest share of the solar polysilicon manufacturing capacity worldwide, at around 79.4 percent. This was followed by Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, but by a...
This data-file aggregates polysilicon production by facility, by company, by region, by country and over time. China now controls almost 90% of the world''s polysilicon production capacity, with six large Chinese companies comprising over 80% of capacity.
In 2021, China accounted for the largest share of the solar polysilicon
Six polysilicon manufacturers accounted for a total polysilicon capacity of 470,000
China dominates the global polysilicon market, with overseas production lagging behind
The global polysilicon industry is gradually shifting towards China
Domestic enterprises are mostly concentrated in Inner Mongolia and Sichuan
Since the main downstream products of polysilicon, photovoltaic cells, and modules are concentrated in China, which has a high demand for polysilicon, China primarily relies on imports. According to customs data, China imported 88,000 tons of polysilicon in 2022, and 62,900 tons in 2023, a year-on-year decrease of 28.46%, mainly from Germany, Malaysia, Japan, and Taiwan, among other regions. As new polysilicon capacities in China are successively put into operation and utilized, the self-sufficiency rate of polysilicon has increased, leading to a decline in import volumes.
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Once upon a time, there were seven sisters who lived in four countries You think this is a fairy tale? No – for two decades, the polysilicon industry consisted of just seven manufacturers, who bore the nickname "Seven Sisters." In 2005, however, this oligopoly began to crumble. Learn how far OCI in South Korea and the largest polysilicon manufacturers in China have caught up with the Western incumbents Wacker and Hemlock, and who the top ten polysilicon manufacturers in the world are today.
DC Chemical had a good nose for the market of the future. In 2000 the South Korean chemicals group began to develop its own technology to produce polysilicon based on the Siemens process in cooperation with the Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology (KRICT).
That was a smart strategic decision, given the fact that the polysilicon market did not look good then. After the downturn of the semiconductor sector in 1998 and the burst of the dotcom bubble in 2000 (''double dip''), the polysilicon industry was plagued with overcapacity, and prices tanked (see our polysilicon market analysis).
But DC Chemical was right in betting on the rapidly growing polysilicon demand of the solar industry. The company was even a bit late when it started construction of its first polysilicon plant, which had an annual production capacity of 5,000 metric tons (MT), in August 2006. By that time, the polysilicon price on the spot market had already soared to almost US$300 per kilogram, up from US$28/kg in 2003. When the factory commenced commercial production in March 2008, it was at the last moment before the spot price began to decline again (polysilicon price trend).
Renamed OCI Company in April 2009, the South Korean manufacturer became one of the most successful new entrants in the polysilicon industry because it did several things right:
In its 2010 Annual Report, OCI announced another polysilicon plant ("P4") in Gunsan with a capacity of 20,000 MT and envisaged a bright future: "With P4, we will achieve a total manufacturing capacity of 62,000 metric tons and become the largest polysilicon supplier in the world."
This dream, however, did not come true. Oversupply on the polysilicon market forced OCI to stop the project in 2012. Instead, the company increased its production capacity by 10,000 MT through low-cost debottlenecking in 2015, thus reaching a total of 52,000 MT.
In 2017 OCI purchased the new Malaysian polysilicon plant from Japanese manufacturer Tokuyama. The factory is fed by low-cost electricity from hydropower; however, Tokuyama was unable to fully ramp it up to its nameplate capacity of 20,000 MT and make it cost-competitive. OCI has revamped the plant to a capacity of 30,000 MT within three years.
This secured OCI the rank as the world''s third-largest polysilicon manufacturer through 2019. In February 2020, however, the company succumbed to the price pressure from low-cost Chinese plants and shut down its Korean factory in Gunsan – except for the P1 plant with a capacity of 6,500 MT, which is now producing electronic-grade polysilicon for the semiconductor industry.
The way GCL-Poly Energy Holdings dealt with the oversupply phase in 2011/2012 tells much about Chinese mentality. Against all odds, the company boosted the capacity of its China-based subsidiary Jiangsu Zhongneng Polysilicon Technology Development Company from 25,000 MT to a whopping 65,000 MT in 2011.
The consequence was a very low utilization rate in 2012. But supported by the market recovery in 2013 and the in-house polysilicon consumption of GCL''s wafer subsidiary, Jiangsu Zhongneng got out of the doldrums and became the world''s largest polysilicon manufacturer in 2013. Nevertheless, GCL-Poly''s debt load is still high.
The beginnings of the company were rather modest in comparison. Jiangsu Zhongneng commenced the construction of a small 1,500 MT production facility in Xuzhou in the eastern Chinese province of Jiangsu in July 2006 – almost at the same time as OCI did. After starting up production in September 2007, Zhongneng raised the capacity step by step to 25,000 MT before it made the big leap to the world''s top in 2011.
Despite the economies of scale, the company''s production costs suffered from the high electricity rates in eastern China. Therefore, Zhongneng commissioned a captive power plant in 2015 to generate electricity at half of the cost that it paid for power supply from the grid before.
For many years, the purity of Zhongneng''s polysilicon product was not overly high, but good enough to supply GCL''s wafer subsidiary and make it the world''s largest producer of multicrystalline solar wafers. This model, however, has come under pressure since the global market share of monocrystalline solar wafers, which require polysilicon of higher purity, began to rise in 2015.
GCL has responded to this challenge by building a new polysilicon plant with a capacity of 48,000 MT in the Xinjiang Uyghur autonomous region in northwestern China and reducing the capacity of Zhongneng in Xuzhou to 42,000 MT. The new plant in Xinjiang, which started production in October 2018, tackles the challenge in three ways:
After a major explosion at its distillation unit in July 2020 delayed the planned capacity increase to 60,000 MT, Xinjiang GCL completed the expansion in April 2021.
In Xuzhou, GCL-Poly''s focus has shifted to fluidized bed reactor (FBR) technology to produce granular polysilicon. Building on FBR assets acquired from bankrupt SunEdison in 2017, Jiangsu Zhongneng began to gradually convert its conventional polysilicon factory to a monosilane-based FBR plant in 2020. The company is aiming to reach an FBR capacity of 54,000 MT by the first quarter of 2022. In October 2020 GCL-Poly celebrated the groundbreaking for a second FBR plant with a capacity of 60,000 MT in Leshan, Sichuan province.
GCL and OCI were the two most successful among a few dozens of new polysilicon manufacturers that entered the industry beginning in 2005. Until then, an oligopoly of only seven companies, known as the "Seven Sisters", had ruled the market:
The Seven Sisters ran ten polysilicon plants in the United States, Germany, Italy and Japan. The only China-based polysilicon manufacturer at that time, Emei Semiconductor, played a negligible role as it merely had a tiny annual production capacity of 100 MT (see chart).
Wacker, Mitsubishi, Sumitomo Titanium and Hemlock already started to produce polysilicon on an industrial scale between 1959 and 1961; the rest followed suit between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s. For decades, all of them produced exclusively electronic-grade polysilicon for the semiconductor sector; only Tokuyama and Mitsubishi are still focused on electronic grade today. Osaka Titanium shut down production at the end of 2018, MEMC in the U.S. in 2015 and in Italy in 2011.
The photovoltaic (PV) branch solely lived on scrap silicon from the semiconductor sector until the late 1990s. When the polysilicon demand from the PV industry strongly increased, Renewable Energy Corporation (REC) from Norway first formed a joint venture with ASiMI in 2002, then acquired the company in 2005 to use part of its production capacity for solar-grade instead of electronic-grade polysilicon. But it was mainly Hemlock and Wacker that invested massively in new production capacities for solar-grade polysilicon, starting in 2006. Both closed long-term supply contracts with customers who financed the expansion by making high prepayments.
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