The Ningbo Boway Alloy Materials Company, a Chinese materials manufacturer, has announced plans to expand its tunnel oxide passivated contact (TOPCon) cell manufacturing capacity in the US by 2GW.
This builds on the company’s previously announced plans to invest in the construction of a 3GW TOPCon cell expansion project in Vietnam and a separate 2GW TOPCon module expansion project in the US, with a total investment of RMB1.9 billion (US$262 million).
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With the construction of a PV cell plant in the US, the total investment amount has increased to RMB3.15 billion (US$435 million), and the scale of the project has been further expanded. Boway Alloy subsidiary Boviet Solar is the main investor for both the Vietnam and US projects, and investment and construction funds are all self-owned and self-financed.
Boway Alloy said that after the company’s detailed investigation of the US PV market’s demand, supply and related industrial policies, it concluded that the market will still feature strong demand and potential profitability in the long term but that existing capacity supply in the US is limited.
The news follows a number of investments made into the US cell manufacturing space, with Canadian Solar announcing plans to build a 5GW cell production facility last October. Locating manufacturing capacity in the US is a priority for many US companies, many of which have called on President Biden to stop manufacturing centres based in China being allowed to “destroy” US manufacturing potential.
Boway Alloy doubles net profits
Benefiting from the incremental development of the international market, Boway Alloy’s financial performance has steadily strengthened in the past two years.
On 22 April, Boway Alloy released its 2023 annual report. According to the report, in 2023, the company achieved operating income of nearly RMB18 billion (US$2.48 billion), a year-on-year increase of more than 30%, and net profit of more than RMB1.1 billion (US$152 million), more than double year-on-year.
Boway Alloy’s renewable energy business’s main manufacturing base is in Vietnam, and the solar cells and modules it produces are mainly sold to the US market, where demand is high. This has allowed the company to maximise its profits, as the average wage of workers in the area where the Vietnamese production base operates is low, coupled with low energy prices, which are conducive to minimising production costs.
The financial statements also show that international business revenue has become an important part of Boway Alloy’s income. In 2023, international revenue accounted for 55.79% of the company’s main business income.
