GCL-Poly Energy Holdings reported around a US$432 million loss from its solar materials business in 2012, which includes polysilicon and solar wafers.
The solar materials segment generated annual sales of approximately US$1.69 billion, down from approximately US$2.6 billion in 2011.
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Polysilicon nameplate capacity remained at 65,000MT, although the company produced 37,055MT of polysilicon, an increase of 26.0%, compared to 29,414MT produced in the preceding year.
GCL-Poly said that it produced around 5,622MW of wafers in 2012, an increase of 25.3% over the prior year. Wafer shipments were approximately 5,594MW in 2012.
The company generated approximately US$99 million from trading in third party modules in 2013.
Price decline
The company reported that the average selling price (ASP) of polysilicon in 2012 had been US$20.8/kg, compared to US$47.7/kg in 2011, representing a 56.4% decline year-on-year.
Solar wafer ASP in 2012 was US$0.25/W, down from US$0.54/W in 2011. The price decline year-on-year was 53.7%.
Production costs
GCL-Poly said that despite lower utilization rates in the second-half of 2012, its average polysilicon production costs decreased only 5.6% from US$20.8/kg in 2011 to US$19.7/kg in 2012.
Future cost reductions from polysilicon are expected to come from silane production ramp and the production of FBR-based granular polysilicon.
However, wafer production costs fell significantly (41.7%), down from approximately US$0.43/W in 2011 to US$0.25/W in 2012.
PV Project pipeline
Management noted that its solar power plant business would be the business growth driver going forward. The company claimed to have project pipeline of around 1GW spanning over several years. In particular the US market would be a key driver for its project business.
At the end of 2012 the company said it had 327MW PV projects ready to commence construction. Revenue from sales of solar farm projects US$332.0 million in 2012.
