Chint New Energy, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chint Electrics, will buy out 17 distributed PV power assets from Longi Green Energy totaling 106.3 MW in capacity at 703 million yuan, announced Chint Group on July 2, according to the Beijing News, which cites the deal as another example for the M&A trend raging China's PV power industry, following sales of assets by GCL-Poly.

Founded in 2000 with share listing in 2012, Longi has become one of the leading mono-si PV product manufacturers in the world, according to the company's website. The company has been at the forefront of the current among Chinese PV power firms scrambling to expand capacities since 2017. It targeted raising its chip capacity to 28 GW by the end of 2018 and 45 GW by the end of 2020, up from 15 GW at the end of 2017, according to a plan unveiled in Jan. this year.

The expansion plan, however, has become outdated, following rollout of tightening policy, dubbed as "531" policy and the most stringent one ever, by the Ministry of Finance and the National Energy Administration, calling for reasonable constraint on expansion of PV power capacities, at the end of May.

Founded in 1997, Chint Electrics stepped into PV power in 2016 via the 100% acquisition of Chint New Energy.

Chint Electrics is part of Chint Group, founded in 1984, boasting 60 billion yuan in annual sales and a workforce of 30,000, as well as business scope covering entire power-equipment supply chain, including power generation, storage, substation, distribution, and consumption, plus deployment in urban rail transit, energy-equipment manufacturing, new energy-storage materials, funding platform, and corporate incubator park.

Chint Electrics pointed out that the acquisition will help the company optimize the structure of its PV power stations and its regional deployment.

The deal comes on the heels of the announcement by Shanghai Electric in June to take over 51% stake in Jiangsu Zhongneng Silicon Technology Development, the world's largest polysilicon manufacturer, from GCL-Poly Energy. With Zhongneng's valuation reaching 25 billion yuan, GCL-Poly is expected to pocket 6.4 billion yuan from the deal.

(First photo courtesy of Pixabay)