President Lee Woo-hyun of OCI Co.

OCI has been able to recoup its share price after the Chinese government announced recently that it would continue supporting solar energy firms.

OCI produces poly silicon, a key raw material for solar energy panels, and exports 80 to 90 percent of its output to China.

The company’s share price on Nov. 8 jumped 2,500 won per share or 2.5 percent from the previous day’s trading to finish the day at 99,600 won per share. During the day, it climbed past 100,000 per share in price, but fell back near the closing hours.

But in November, the share price climbed 16.9 percent, the highest in the year, to 187,000 won per share. However the stock began to slide from June after the Chinese government announced it would stop subsidizing solar power firms. The company’s Q3 sales fell 18.7 percent at 765.6 billion won, with operating profit at 15.6 billion won, down a whopping 80.2 percent YoY.

The basic materials sector, which includes the poly silicon, actually ended up with the loss of 58.8 billion won.
But the company was able to recover when the Chinese government announced that it will continue supporting the new recycled energy firms until 2022. The announcement boosted the share prices of global poly silicon firms the likes of GCL, Wacker, and Longi, among others.

An analyst with Kyobo Securities forecasts a rebound in solar power plant materials prices in the days ahead. They have fallen around 30 percent on average, with the inventories down sizably now since the Chinese government announcement in May.

OCI decided to intensively invest in and develop the key material for Solar PV. Polysilicon as the next-generation business as OCI considered that solar power was the fastest-growing business among alternative energies in 2006. OCI constructed the Gunsan Plant, with a capacity of 5,000t/yr.

The second and third plants were added in 2009 and 2010, respectively. By increasing its production capacity by 10,000t/yr by debottlenecking (improving the production process) of the third plant in 2015 and acquiring Tokuyama’s Malaysia polysilicon business in 2017, OCI has become the world’s second-largest polysilicon producer with a total production capacity of 72,000t/yr.

Usage

Polysilicon is the basic core material for solar Solar PV industry, positioned at the very first step of the PV value chain, consists of ingots, wafers, cells, modules and solar power generation systems. OCI provides 10-Nine (99.99999999% purity) Polysilicon for solar power generation and 11-Nine (99.999999999% purity) for semiconductor wafers.

Production Process

Metal Silicon (MG-Si) is produced by reducing and melting Quartz. Metal silicon is then mixed with hydrogen and hydrochloric acid to produce high-purity trichloride silane (TCS). Then it undergoes chemical evaporation at high temperatures to produce high-purity solid Polysilicon.

OCI Solar Power LLC was founded in 2011. It was the first company to bring utility scale solar projects to Texas. In 2015, OCI opened the $130 million Mission Solar Energy manufacturing plant in San Antonio, Texas, with capability of manufacturing 200 MW of N-Type and P-Type PV cells and modules for utility customers.

As of August 31, 2017, there are 950 MW that have been installed and are operating in the ERCOT market, with 450 developed, designed, procured, and constructed by OCISP. Three of our four Texas-based projects are 100% Buy American Act complaint, and one of our projects, Alamo 6, is the largest dual-axis solar farm in the United States.

A research staff at OCI Research Center examines a poly silicon. (Photos: OCI)