The US has banned a subsidiary of JA Solar from shipping goods to the country under its forced labour legislation.
Donghai JA Solar Technology Co., a subsidiary of major Chinese solar manufacturer JA Solar, was one of 37 companies added to the Uyghur Forced Labour Prevention Act (UFLPA) entity list, which is managed by the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), yesterday.
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On behalf of its Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force (FLETF), the DHS said: “The United States government has reasonable cause to believe, based on specific and articulable information, that Donghai JA Solar sources polysilicon from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR).
“Information reviewed by the FLETF, including corporate reporting and other publicly available information, indicates that Donghai JA Solar sources polysilicon from a polysilicon producer located in the XUAR.”
As of today, the US government will apply a “rebuttable presumption that goods produced by the named 37 entities will be prohibited from entering the United States.”
PV Tech reached out to JA Solar for comment on this story.
UFLPA impacts
The UFLPA is designed to prevent products from entering the US which are exposed to alleged forced labour enacted by the Chinese state in the XUAR. In the solar industry, the issues are concentrated upstream of the supply chain in polysilicon production, metallurgical silicon production and quartz mining operations.
The law has had a significant impact on US solar supply chains. In 2022 – the year the UFLPA was introduced – Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) detained around 2GW of modules worth around US$700 million. The volume of detainments has increased over the last two years, with over US$1 billion worth of products detained in the first half of 2024. PV Tech Premium published a blog last week from the CEO of solar data platform Anza looking at the impact of US import laws on the country’s supply chains.
JA Solar consistently ranks among the top three-to-five global solar manufacturers. In the 2024 module manufacturer rankings, PV Tech head of research Finlay Colville placed JA Solar third in module shipments globally, behind only JinkoSolar and Trina Solar.
The DHS added two other manufacturers of solar components to the UFLPA entity list: Hongyuan Green Energy Co. and its subsidiary Hongyuan New Materials (Baotou) Co., and Jiangsu Meike Solar Technology Co. and its subsidiary Baotou Meike Silicon Energy Co.
Both of these companies produce silicon products in the Inner Mongolian region of China; the US government said it “has reasonable cause to believe” the companies source polysilicon from the XUAR.
The DHS also added 26 entities from the cotton industry and a number of companies associated with labour transfers and the movement of Uyghur people. The full list can be read here.
