Chinese Solar Major Tongwei Plans $4 Billion Factory as Consolidation Looms

(Bloomberg) — Tongwei Co. Ltd., the world’s largest manufacturer of a key material for solar panels, said it will build a massive new factory in northern China just as the industry struggles with a price war and a looming wave of consolidation.

Tongwei has agreed with local authorities in Ordos, Inner Mongolia, to invest 28 billion yuan ($3.9 billion) in a two-phase project that will eventually have capacity to produce 500,000 tons of industrial silicon and 400,000 tons of polysilicon annually, the Chengdu, Sichuan-based company said in a stock exchange filing on Monday.