President Lee Woo-hyun of OCI Co.

A view of OCI’s ESS plant with 51 Mwh capacity in Gunsan, North Jeolla Province.

OCI Co. logged 852.5 billion won in 4th quarter sale, up 31 percent year-on-year, with operating profit coming to 102.2 billion won, the largest since the first quarter of 2012, far above the 91.9 billion won in consensus.

Polysilicon helped turn the company’s operation around last year, with the price of the product continuously rising in Q3 and Q4 in the Chinese market, which was impacted by a subsidy paid by the Chinese government. The price of polysilicon rose 12 percent from the preceding quarter in Q4 to boost operating profit 109 percent.

At the same time, the price of TDI, the raw material for polyurethane, and the price of pitch for refinement of aluminum had a positive impact on boosting the profit of the petrochemical and carbon material business dep’ts. Experts looked positively at OCI’s result improvement, commenting that it signals its revival. 

An analyst with SK Securities said the company has been improving its operations with the purchase of the facilities in Malaysia emerging as a positive factor. 

OCI logged a total sale of 3.81 trillion won in 2017 with the energy solution showing 810.7 billion won in sales for the year, up 88 percent YoY, the petrochemical and carbon division with 1.319.3 trillion won in sales, up 50 percent YoY and the basic chemical with 1.683.2 trillion won, up 8 percent YoY.

OCI announced that it would supply $1.02 billion (1.1 trillion won) worth of polysilicon to Longi Solar in China until 2021. 

The amount is equivalent to 40% of OCI’s 2017 annual sales. Longi Solar is a world-class manufacturing company high-efficiency monocrystalline solar cells and modules and has a production capacity of 15GW of mono ingots/wafers as of 2017. It plans to expand to 28GW and 45GW by 2018 and 2020, respectively.

The contract is noteworthy as it is the largest long-term supply deal that has been made since 2011. In addition, the contract was concluded as OCI’s ability to supply polysilicon for high-efficiency monocrystalline wafers was recognized due to a recent increase in demand for high-efficiency solar cells in China’s solar PV market. With this contract, OCI has secured a stable purchaser of polysilicon from its Gunsan plant (52,000 t/yr) and Malaysia plant (20,000 t/yr).

On Jan. 3, OCI also won a contract worth 357.2 billion won to supply polysilicon to Jinko Solar, a Chinese PV company and the world’s No. 1 solar module manufacturer.