JA Solar on Monday announced a major production expansion plan involving 11.55 billion yuan to enhance the company’s vertically integrated production capacity.
The plan includes the construction of wafer, cell and module factories in two different locations.
In Shijiazhuang, a city in China’s Hebei province, the company will build a 10 GW wafer slicing production line, a 10 GW solar cell production line, and a R&D center for new solar cell technologies. The wafer and solar cell factories are expected to be completed in 11 months.
In Dongtai, a city in China’s Jiangsu province, JA Solar will set up a 10 GW solar cell fab and a 10 GW module fab. It is estimated that the factories will be built in 24 months.
JA Solar said that the projects are in line with the company’s production strategies. Once put into operation, the factories are believed to effectively improve its production capacity of high efficiency products, while meeting market demands for high efficiency products.
Solarbe noticed that this is the third production ramp-up plan JA Solar has announced since the start of November. The total investment volume is up to 29.19 billion yuan.
On November 16 and 23, the company released plans to invest 10.2 billion yuan and 7.44 billion yuan on the expansion of vertically integrated capacity.
JA Solar’s financial reports show that, by the end of 2021, the company’s module production capacity globally has reached about 40 GW. Wafer and solar cell capacity is about 80 percent of the module capacity.
According to JA Solar’s plan, by the end of 2022 and 2023, its module capacity will exceed 50 GW and 75 GW. Its wafer and solar cell capacity will continue to maintain about 80 percent of the module capacity.
In the first three quarters of 2022, JA Solar achieved an operating revenue of 49.32 billion yuan, an increase of 89.00% year on year. The shipment ranking from Q1 to Q3 released by Solarbe Consulting shows that the company ranks fourth with 27.1 GW module shipments globally.
