Featured in Lighting the way – 05-2024

Déjà vu on the polysilicon market

Haven’t we been here before? The polysilicon industry is shifting from shortage to oversupply but a few things are different from market cycles of the past, as Bernreuter Research founder Johannes Bernreuter explains.
Top Chinese polysilicon manufacturers have significantly expanded production capacity. | Photo: MEI Wet Processing

 No sooner had a shortage of solar-grade polysilicon triggered a rise in the spot price than the first new polysilicon projects were being announced in China. Construction sites mushroomed all over the country. By 2010, when the spot price crashed from its exorbitant April 2008 peak of $475/kg to $55/kg, there were already 41 Chinese …

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