On November 20, the reporter and a number of institutional investors visited the GCL-Poly Xinjiang polysilicon production base for field investigation. Jiang Wenwu, senior vice president of GCL-Poly, said that after the 60,000-ton capacity was fully reached by the middle of next year, the cost of polysilicon production at Xinjiang base could be reduced to less than 40,000 yuan per ton. At the same time, the production cost of the Xuzhou base can be controlled at 50,000 yuan per ton. At present, the average domestic polysilicon ex-factory price is about 80,000 yuan per ton.
The project base is about 316 kilometers away from Urumqi Diwopu Airport, and is located in Xinjiang Zhundong Economic and Technological Development Zone. The company's full name is Xinjiang GCL New Energy Materials Technology Co., Ltd.
This is a joint venture between GCL-Poly and Tianjin Zhonghuan Semiconductor Co., Ltd., listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange, with 70% and 30% shareholdings, respectively. According to reports, when the project started construction, it was designed to target semiconductor-grade polysilicon. Later, the Xuzhou base has already mass-produced semiconductor-grade polysilicon products, and the semiconductor-grade market is relatively limited. Therefore, solar-grade polysilicon was manufactured in accordance with semiconductor-grade standards.
GCL-Poly is the world's largest polysilicon production company and currently has a 60,000-ton polysilicon production capacity at its Xuzhou production base. The Xinjiang base is its newly-arranged production base. It plans to build an annual output of 100,000 tons of high-purity polysilicon.
On October 28, 2018, the company issued a second production increase announcement, saying that the capacity of Xinjiang polysilicon base increased from 50,000 tons to 60,000 tons, and officially commissioned. Previously on September 19, the company released its mid-year report, saying that the capacity of the newly constructed facilities will increase from 40,000 tons to 50,000 tons.
The reporter's on-site investigation learned that after only 8 months of the official construction period, GCL-Poly Xinjiang's 50,000-ton polysilicon production capacity has been put into operation, and it is in the ramp-up phase. It is expected that in the first quarter of 2019, all 50,000 tons of polysilicon production capacity will be released; at the end of the second quarter of 2019, all 60,000 tons of polysilicon production capacity will be released. As for when to expand production to 100,000 tons, the company will determine again based on market conditions.
In mid-2019, GCL-Poly's polysilicon production will achieve 60,000 tons in Xuzhou and 60,000 tons in Xinjiang. The total production capacity of high-purity polysilicon will reach 120,000 tons.
At the survey site, institutional investors are not only concerned about the advantages of scale, but also their ability to control costs and room for decline. As the upstream source of the photovoltaic industry chain, investors are quite concerned about the trend of polysilicon prices.
From 2010 to 2011, China's ex-factory price of polysilicon once reached 740,000 yuan per ton. According to the latest statistics from Wind, on November 23, 2018, the average ex-factory price of polysilicon for mainstream manufacturers in China was 79,400 yuan per ton, a decrease of 44.1% from the beginning of the year (142,000 yuan). Among them, since the "531" New Deal (116,000 yuan) in the industry, the decline has accelerated, and the price has fallen by 31.5% in less than half a year.
The sharp drop in ex-factory prices put pressure on production companies to reduce costs. There is no doubt that with such a rapid rate of cost reduction, the entire industry will definitely move towards an oligopoly competition in the future.
The shift of production capacity to regions with more cost advantages is an inevitable choice for the survival and production development of enterprises. The layout of polysilicon production capacity in Xinjiang, the advantage of electricity prices, and proximity to raw material bases (industrial silicon) are the main considerations.
As the president of GCL-Poly Polysilicon Materials Division, Jiang Wenwu analyzed the cost structure of Xinjiang polysilicon base to investors.
The unit investment cost of GCL-Poly Xinjiang polysilicon project is at a very low level in the industry. Through the localization of core equipment, the investment of 60,000 tons is 5.998 billion yuan, and the investment per 10,000 tons is less than 1 billion, which is much lower than the equivalent of 1.5 billion yuan / 10,000 tons. Average. Among unit costs, energy cost (electricity price, steam price) accounts for about 35% of total cost, and silicon powder accounts for about 27% of total cost.
Jiang Wenwu introduced that the technology and process of the Xinjiang base have been tested and developed in Xuzhou for more than ten years. The independent patented technology comes from the Xuzhou base, such as the original waste residue treatment technology, such as hydrogen treatment capacity. The Xuzhou base has achieved industry-leading 200,000 tons of hydrogenation, and the Xinjiang base will achieve 300,000 tons of single line.
In terms of energy consumption costs, the electricity price of this project is about 0.24 yuan per kilowatt-hour, which is low in Xinjiang's Inner Mongolia low electricity price area; steam prices can be controlled at a lower level. Both electricity and gas come from the adjacent Xinjiang Guoxin Zhundong Coal-fired Project (2 × 660MW). The power plant is an asset of GCL-Poly's parent company, GCL Group, and has passed special inspection on November 18, 2018.
The reporter saw the polysilicon rods being produced in the GCL reduction workshop in Xinjiang. According to reports, relying on domestic large-scale reduction furnace equipment, compared to conventional silicon rods of about 2.3 meters, Xinjiang GCL's silicon rod length reaches 3.2 meters, and a single reduction furnace produces about 11 tons (about 7 tons of conventional), only 4 With 80 reduction furnaces in each workshop, the capacity of single line 30,000 tons and double line 60,000 tons can be achieved. It is understood that the super-large reduction furnace in Xinjiang was designed in cooperation with GCL and domestic manufacturers and has independent intellectual property rights.
The reporter learned from insiders of Xinjiang Guoxin Power Plant that the Xinjiang polysilicon project is backed by a high-calorie open-pit coal mine, which has obvious advantages in coal power costs. According to the official website of the Zhundong Development Zone, the Zhundong Coalfield is the largest packaged coal field currently found in China. The estimated coal resource reserves are 390 billion tons, accounting for 17.8% of Xinjiang's reserves and 7% of the national reserves. The proven reserves are 253.1 billion tons. , Has the conditions to build a 100-million-ton coal production and deep processing base.
In terms of industrial silicon raw materials, Xinjiang, Yunnan, and Sichuan are the top three provinces in China's industrial silicon production, accounting for about 75% of the country's total output. Among them, Xinjiang, the top industrial silicon output in 2017, was 770,000 tons, accounting for 35% of the country's total output. The Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region has previously issued documents encouraging the improvement of the in-situ conversion rate of industrial silicon, requiring that the in-situ conversion rate reach 70% or more by 2020.
From the perspective of product quality, "In terms of purity, the Xinjiang project products are imported into the semiconductor-grade polysilicon production process at the Xuzhou base, which can fully meet the needs of N-type single crystals. The purity can be as low as 9 9 and as high as 11 9. "Jiang Wenwu said.
Generally, the purity of solar grade polysilicon is between 6-9 9s.
This project is a cooperative project between GCL-Poly and Zhonghuan, so most of the products will be used by Zhonghuan.
In terms of energy saving and emission reduction, the Xinjiang base fully introduced the mature GCL method polysilicon ultra-large-scale clean production technology ("GCL method") at the Xuzhou base to strengthen the energy recovery and utilization within the system and reduce operating costs. The project uses a fully closed loop process to reduce losses and achieve zero emissions.
Xinjiang has already entered winter in late November. At the project site, although it was noon and the sun was shining, the temperature had dropped below minus 10 degrees. When it was the coldest, the local temperature was below minus 30 degrees.
Although the local products are rich and the scenery is magnificent, the natural environment is harsh. The reporter learned that this project with a capacity of 60,000 tons currently only has more than 800 employees. Half of them are from Xuzhou. Most of them are 10-year-old GCL employees, and half are based on localization. As well as targeted training in vocational schools. The Xinjiang base will fully introduce intelligent manufacturing. Without intelligent manufacturing, at least 2,000 people will be required for projects of the same capacity. Jiang Wenwu introduced that the Xinjiang project relies on more than ten years of technology and process practice in the Xuzhou base. The Xuzhou base starts from a single line of 1,000 tons, to 5,000 tons, and then to the single phase of more than 15,000 tons in the fourth phase. The production experience is very rich and the technology is accumulated. Strong, this is the fundamental reason that Xinjiang base can achieve a single line of 30,000 tons.
According to the site's understanding, GCL-Poly's "dual base" strategy has been implemented. Based on the production cost of less than 40,000 yuan in Xinjiang, the cost of the Xuzhou base can be controlled at 50,000 yuan, which is about 10,000 yuan higher than Xinjiang, but it is ranked in the global polysilicon It is among the lowest cost 250,000 tons. The annual global polysilicon consumption exceeds 400,000 tons, and the 60,000 tons of Xuzhou base is also the first in cost and quality.
Not far away (about more than a hundred kilometers), and also in the Zhundong Development Zone, Dongfang New Hope's polysilicon project is under construction.