SOLAR ENERGY BUSINESS “LIGHT OF RESURRECTION” ---

HANWHA AND OCI START MAKING PROFITS

The Hanwha Group announced that its solar energy business is expected to make a profit of about 10 billion won in the first quarter of this year. It is a turn-around in three years. The Hanwha Group has invested over one trillion won whereas Samsung, LG, etc. have hesitated to invest or have been withdrawing from business, being conscious of an oversupply originating from China. Nevertheless, the solar energy business of the Group had losses snowballing with an operating loss of 104 billion won last year only.

The driving force that has caused Hanwha to make profits in such circumstances comes from the restructuring of Chinese enterprises and a steady growth of the solar energy market. A convincing prospect for the industry is that Hanwha’s solar energy business will continue to grow in earnest, making an estimated operating profit of more than 100 billion won next year.

Also OCI, one of the world’s top three polysilicon (solar cell material) manufacturers, said on the 23rd at a results announcement meeting that“With an operating profit of 27.8 billion won for the first quarter of this year, the deficit of the previous quarter has turned into a profit.” OCI, which has been enduring deficit operation since the fourth quarter of 2012, continued to suffer losses except for the second quarter of last year. Shinsung Solar Energy and Woongjin Energy also expect to make profits in the first half of this year. Further, Hankook Silicon, which was declared temporarily insolvent in December 2012, came out of receivership earlier than expected in September last year and has been running their factory in full swing since last month.

Experts foresee that not only the market share of Korean products in China will increase but also the demand for solar energy in China will increase, although at present the volume of Chinese imports of polysilicon is on the order of that of Germany, America and Korea.