Wacker Chemie's long-planned construction of a 15,000MT per annum polysilicon plant in Cleveland, Tennessee, has officially broken ground. The project is said to cost around US$1.5 billion and will create some 650 new jobs when the plant become operational in late 2013. With other planned capacity expansions in Germany, Wacker reiterated that it expects to reach an annual polysilicon capacity of 67,000MT in 2014.
“This expansion is necessary to meet our customers’ future needs for top-quality polysilicon to make high-efficiency solar cells,” commented Rudolf Staudigl, Wacker Chemie AG’s CEO.
Staudigl noted that almost the entire output of the Tennessee plant had already been contractually secured for 2014, and the project is the single largest investment ever made by the company.
Interestingly, Wacker had previously and most recently stated that the plant would cost about US$1.1 billion.
