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Mobile WebSiteSolarWorld, a German businessman who has sparked a hot solar trade between China and the United States and Central Europe, has lost its operating losses as a result of falling product prices, and finally declares that it can not pay its debts and will enter insolvency proceedings.
Foreign media reports, local time on May 10, SolarWorld officially announced that it will enter the bankruptcy proceedings. SolarWorld said in a brief statement that "the company is unable to pay off its debts due to the continued disorder in the price of (solar products), and the future is no longer optimistic."
Solar Africa's founder and chief executive, Frank Asbeck, said he was "quite hard" for bankruptcy. In his statement, he thanked SolarWorld employees for their painstaking efforts to build a fair environment for the solar industry. He said the price crash in China made the price of solar cells and components began to plummet in the second half of the year, and the company's operating outlook for the next few months was quite pessimistic and finally declared bankrupt.
SolarWorld's number of employees, statistics to the end of 2016 there are still more than 3,000 people, including 800 people employed in the US branch. Asbeck said it would protect employees' rights as much as possible.
Difficult to change the market conditions, operating year after year loss
SolarWorld continues to suffer losses since 2014, as the market continues to show oversupply and the global component prices decline year after year. The loss to the second half of 2016 due to increased supply of components, the price has deteriorated further deterioration, even if the first quarter of 2017 slightly reduced, still can not turn.
SolarWorld Germany and US companies have filed a double anti-litigation against China, hoping to protect the local industry through trade barriers. However, with China, Taiwan and other places in the third place to open capacity, trade barriers to reduce the impact of lower prices, deterioration of SolarWorld's profitability.
Follow-up impact: trade warfare, production gap
EnergyTrend analysts pointed out that the bankruptcy of SolarWorld Germany will directly lead to three follow-up questions: first, whether the US companies will follow bankruptcy? Second, whether to bring the supply of windows? Third, China and the United States, Sino-US trade barriers continue?
For the first question, the United States SolarWorld will follow up bankruptcy, is still unable to judge. And whether the United States SolarWorld bankruptcy, will directly affect the United States on China, Taiwan, the two anti-measures whether the continuation of the problem. Similarly, will the EU-China double will continue? If the EU-China anti-SolarWorld bankruptcy and the suspension of China's European refraction of polysilicon will continue? These problems, still can not get answers at this stage.
On the other hand, according to EnergyTrend, SolarWorld's current global capacity (including ingots, wafers, batteries, components) is about 1.5GW and is dominated by single crystals. SolarWorld has previously announced that it will be fully converted to single crystal PERC, but the capacity adjustment is probably not yet completed. From SolarWorld's 2016 annual report, the company originally expected to significantly adjust the supply chain capacity distribution in 2017, of which more than 1GW battery capacity will be moved back to Germany; its capacity to adjust the pace and the actual situation, will also affect the German company bankruptcy Will bring the production gap.
SolarWorld enjoys market pioneer and efficient technical advantages, in Europe and the United States of the roof market has a certain market share. In 2016, SolarWorld's component shipments were 1.3GW, of which about 14% were shipped to Germany, about 500MW shipments to the United States. SolarWorld Germany's bankruptcy is bound to affect production capacity, and the impact of the size of how the gap will be how to make up, but also depends on the circumstances of bankruptcy.
In April this year, the United States Suniva request bankruptcy after the request to enable the provisions of Article 201; if the implementation of Article 201, the United States will be all foreign solar energy products trade barriers, when the United States and other markets trade relations will add more variables. EnergyTrend analysts have previously said, 201 terms will stimulate the short-term needs of the United States; and SolarWorld announced at this time bankruptcy, the inevitable supply gap will create new shipping opportunities for other manufacturers.
