GCL-Poly announced on November 11 that its subsidiary Jiangsu Zhongneng’s latest capacity-building project has entered operation. The project involves setting up an annual production capacity of 20,000MT for granular silicon that is manufactured using the FBR process. The construction of the production facility building started in February this year and finished at the end of October. This was followed by the installation, calibration, and testing of the equipment. The entire project formally came online on November 10. The entire development period lasted about nine months.

According to local Chinese media outlets, this project is the first of its kind to have entered operation for GCL-Poly. The Chinese polysilicon supplier has been an advocate for the adoption granular silicon in the PV industry and is proceeding with several projects to scale up the production of this material. What is unique about this particular project is that GCL-Poly for the first time has successfully implemented its “modular” design principle for the whole production system. The Chinese media outlets reported that the company applied the modular design principle to structural configuration of facility building, process flow, equipment setup, production line installation, distribution of material input, etc.

Bernreuter Research reported in late October that Jiangsu Zhongneng now aims to increase its production capacity for granular silicon to 30,000MT by the end of 2021. This is a scale-back from the original year-end target of 54,000MT. GCL-Poly is also developing similar projects in Sichuan Province and Inner Mongolia. According to GCL-Poly’s recent statements, the quality of its granular silicon meets all the standards for N-type PV products.