LONGi Green Energy Technology Co. Ltd will be the first Chinese company to set up a solar equipment manufacturing facility in India. The facility will be set up in Andhra Pradesh at an investment of around Chinese renminbi 1.94 billion ($309 million) for manufacturing 1GW of monocrystalline silicon cell and modules each. Solar modules account for nearly 60% of a solar power project’s cost.
The world’s largest monocrystalline solar wafer maker’s India plans come in the backdrop of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government conducting an anti-dumping investigation on solar equipment from China, Taiwan and Malaysia. Additionally, India is exploring to levy a 70% provisional safeguard duty on imported solar panels and modules from China and Malaysia, as recommended by the directorate general of safeguards.
This investment is suppose to generate annual revenues of RMB2.42bn and annual net profit of RMB120mn. The pojects will help LONGi to tap into overseas market further and improve its overseas sales as well as global mono market share. The module factory will be completed and wilol be fuctional by the end of August 2019 while the cell factory will be completed in the end of 2019 and commence production in January 2020.
The other Chinese firms that have been looking at solar equipment manufacturing in India include GCL-Poly Energy Holdings Ltd and Trina Solar Ltd.