Omani solar manufacturing company United Solar Holding has begun production at its polysilicon manufacturing facility in Oman, with a planned annual capacity of 100,000 metric tons.
The announcement was made by China-based Shuangliang Hydrogen in a post on LinkedIn. The company said it supplied four green power intelligent hydrogen production systems to the facility.
“All supplied equipment achieved successful first-time start-up, supporting the project’s commissioning,” the company said in its statement.
The factory is located in the Sohar Freezone and is described as the Middle East’s largest polysilicon manufacturing facility. Once fully ramped up, it is expected to support the production of up to 40 GW of solar modules annually.
In mid-January, United Solar Holding secured more than $900 million in debt financing to complete the funding required for the manufacturing facility.
The final financing package included $480 million in term debt from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and its partner backs.
IFC’s involvement in the project was first confirmed last August. The bank's final funding package breaks down into $200 million from its own account, alongside a long-term debt facility of $50 million from the OPEC Fund for International Development and $230 million committed from Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Al Ahli Bank of Kuwait, Commercial Bank of Dubai and First Abu Dhabi Bank.
United Solar has also received more than $400 million in term debt and working capital facilities from local commercial banks including Oman Arab Bank, which signed a $220 million financing agreement for the project in December.
The company’s largest shareholder is Future Fund Oman, an investment arm belonging to the Oman Investment Authority (OIA). The financing mechanism originally backed the project to the tune of $156 million, but its investment has since increased to around $260 million.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.