Irico posts $7.01 million profit in H1

The PV glass producer —which also trades PV modules and makes lithium battery anode materials — posted a profit of CNY 47.4 million for its solar business, from just CNY 25.3 million in the first half of 2016. Group-wide revenue hit CNY 989.7 million in the January-June period, according to a statement to the Hong Kong stock exchange.

The company — based in Xianyang, Shaanxi province — valued its PV assets at CNY 2.7 billion at the end of June, against CNY 1.2 billion of liabilities. Its sales of solar glass rose throughout the first half of the year, while production costs continued to fall. Its downstream PV project development business also expanded throughout the January-June period with the completion of several undisclosed distributed-generation and ground-mounted solar installations in the Chinese cities of Nanjing, Hefei and Wuhan. In addition, it said that it is preparing to invest in a number of unspecified PV projects that are being developed in Indonesia, India, Pakistan and undisclosed parts of Africa.

However, it did not reveal specifics about its construction schedule, beyond saying that it is contracted to build 58 MW of solar capacity at present. It also did not provide statistics on its sales of PV-generated electricity.

Irico is now building a new PV glass production facility in Yan’an, Shaanxi province, and expects to wrap up upgrades to another manufacturing site in Anhui province by the end of the third quarter. Its quartz-sand mine in Hanzhong, Shaanxi province, also continued to supply raw materials to the group’s PV glass production facilities throughout the first half of 2017, it said without elaborating.