Japanese solar manufacturer TOYO recently announced that its solar cell factory in Ethiopia officially commenced production in early April 2025, with an annual capacity of 2GW, marking the beginning of its localized manufacturing footprint on the African continent. As planned, the factory will deliver over 80MW of solar cell products to customers by the end of April 2025, and will ramp up monthly production to 150-200MW in May-June, achieving full capacity.
In March this year, TOYO, citing “robust external customer demand,” announced plans to increase the annual capacity of its Ethiopian battery factory from 2GW to 4GW, aiming to supply core solar cells to its newly built 2GW module plant in Texas, USA. Junsei Ryu, Chairman and CEO of TOYO, stated, “We are highly optimistic about the current strong market demand and are fully committed to advancing the 2GW expansion plan for the Ethiopian factory.”
The launch of TOYO’s Ethiopian factory coincides with the US Department of Commerce’s imposition of high “anti-dumping and countervailing” tariffs on solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. This move has prompted US-based module manufacturers to urgently seek new duty-free cell supply channels.
Christian Roselund, Senior Policy Analyst at Clean Energy Associates, posted on LinkedIn, “Although most cell manufacturing has already shifted from the four Southeast Asian countries, these tariffs will completely eliminate the remaining production capacity in these nations, impeding the recovery of their cell manufacturing businesses.” Furthermore, Philip Shen, Partner and Senior Analyst at Roth Capital, predicts that the next round of “anti-dumping and countervailing” investigations targeting India, Indonesia, and Laos is expected to commence before the end of the second quarter of 2025.
