Shareholders of Chinese monocrystalline silicon (c-Si) ingot/wafer manufacturer Solargiga Energy have approved its US $107M acquisition of Sino Light Investments, which wholly owns Chinese solar cell maker Jinzhou Huachang Photovoltaic Technology (HPT) and its recently-tripled-to-300MW production capacity, which is about 20%-25% of Solargiga's output capabilities.

Shareholders of Chinese monocrystalline silicon (c-Si) ingot/wafer manufacturer Solargiga Energy have approved its US $107M acquisition of Sino Light Investments, which wholly owns Chinese solar cell maker Jinzhou Huachang Photovoltaic Technology (HPT) and its recently-tripled-to-300MW production capacity, which is about 20%-25% of Solargiga's output capabilities.

Meanwhile, Taiwanese mc-Si ingot/wafer manufacturer Sino-American Silicon (SAS) says it is participating in an equal-owned JV with domestic cell maker Solartech (HTC chairman Cher Wang also holds a 10% stake), which will build and ramp a 1GW facility this year.

There's an important theme in both these deals: the growing importance of streamlining the value chain from ingots to cells. In its Sino Light announcement, Solargiga flat-out stated that it aims to "further accelerate its development of downstream business" to better understand customers' demand, and to develop synergies in its c-Si and mc-Si ingot/wafer businesses. "Vertically integrated players are aggressively driving down costs to enforce their already dominant position," writes Ted Sullivan, senior analyst at Lux Research, in a recent report. In mc-Si, cost-of-goods-sold (COGS) will be slashed from $1.45/W in 2009 to a projected $0.93/W by 2015, so players that specialize in one or two steps of the value chain need to broaden their reach via M&A or JVs such as these. That downward march of COGS, largely driven by poly-Si costs, is also behind project developers' preference for c-Si modules over thin-film technologies.

"Dominance in scale and continued manufacturing innovation will allow vertically integrated players to continue fending off newer technologies," Sullivan writes. "We see x-Si remaining the dominant technology, at least until efficiency improvements begin to plateau in 2015." - J.M.

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