(Update on Gigastorage's announcement)

A fire accident occurred at 4am this morning at Gigastorage’s factories located in Hsinchu industrial zone, Hukou, according to the report from Apple Daily. The fire has been extinguished later this morning and there was no casualties. But since aluminum inventory is stocked in the factory and it appears that the factory of Gigasolar, subsidiary of Gigastorage, was seriously impacted, whether it will affect future aluminum paste productions remains to be seen.

Apple Daily reported that night shift operators claimed to hear explosion sound near Gigastorage at around 4am this morning. Then, they saw flames and smokes coming out of Gigastorage’s factories, so they called fire fighters for help. Although the fire was extinguished at around 7am, the production lines and some raw materials in the factory were destroyed. Gigastorage made announcement later today, indicating shipment is still on-schedule for now as there is enough inventory to ship out. Meanwhile, the company and its production equipments can file insurance claims.

According to EnergyTrend’s understanding, it is not yet clear whether the fire will impact aluminum paste inventory or productions because Gigastorage/Gigasolar are off today due to power supply failure at the factories. It may take one to two days until fully recovered. So far, EnergyTrend learns that the fire will only have small impacts on ribbon productions.

In addition to being a disk storage manufacturer, Gigastorage is a major PV wafer and ribbon manufacturer in Taiwan; Gigasolar is one of the leading PV cell paste manufacutrers in the world. Gigastorage’s stocks plummeted this morning right after the fire accident occurred.

(Photo: Gigastorage and Gigasolar's exhibition booth in PV Taiwan 2014.)