JinkoSolar Signs Long-term Deal with Germany’s Wacker For Polysilicon

China’s solar module manufacturer JinkoSolar Holding Co Ltd. has announced signing a deal with Munich-based chemical company Wacker Chemie AG to procure over 70,000 tonnes of polysilicon.

The deal has been signed yesterday through its subsidiary Jinko Solar Co Ltd for a long-term polysilicon supply agreement with the German firm. Under the terms of the agreement, Wacker will supply over 70,000 tons of polysilicon to Jinko Solar Co., Ltd. from September 2021 to December 2026.

The price for the purchase of polysilicon will be decided according to the market prices. Wacker will reserve the agreed capacity to Jinko Solar Co., Ltd. and supply polysilicon from its production sites in Germany and the United States.

Speaking of the deal, CEO of Jinko Solar, Mr. Kangping Chen stated, “By locking in over 70,000 tons of polysilicon from Wacker, we will ensure the reliability of the manufacturing of our products from a high-quality raw material source, as well as the stable supply of our high-efficiency products to our global clients.”

“This ensures we can continue to provide our global clients with a steady supply of more highly efficient and clean products and to promote the development and advancement of the global PV industry together,” he added.

Wacker Chemie AG is a German multinational chemical company, founded in 1914. Currently, the firm has more than 3,200 state-of-the-art specialty chemical products. WACKER currently operates in India as two distinct legal entities – the 51% fully consolidated subsidiary, Wacker Metroark Chemicals (WMC) with its plant near Kolkata, as well as the 100% subsidiary, Wacker Chemie India (WCIN). Globally, Wacker’s polysilicon production is done under Wacker Chemie.

The firm has actually been struggling to turn a profit for the division, after sales in 2020 hit new lows. To that extent, the orders from Chinese players like Jinko are welcome, although a bit ironic  considering that Chinese focus on domestic manufacturing is what led to the glut in polysilicon capacity till early this year. Part of Jinko’s  plans to source from Wacker might be liked to its exports to the US, where key raw material inputs like polysilicon is being closely watched for any link to the Xinjiang in China, where the US has banned most suppliers from. Most CHinese production of polysilicon happens out of Xinjing.

Recently last month, Jinko Solar had announced that the maximum solar conversion efficiency of its advanced high-efficiency solar module reached 23.53% and has outperformed the previous record of 23.01%, also set by JinkoSolar, in January 2021.

Before that in April, solar module maker has won the 7^th All Quality Matters Award for Green Module Efficiency at the Solar Congress 2021 held by TÜV Rheinland. This award recognizes the high-efficiency performance of JinkoSolar’s N-type monocrystalline bifacial and N-type monocrystalline mono-facial Tiger modules and marks another milestone achievement after the Company’s previous win for TÜV Rheinland’s PV Module Energy Yield Simulation Awards for both the Mono Group and Poly Group.