Jinko Solar: Interview with Arturo Herrero, Chief Marketing Officer

Jinko Solar Holding Co., Ltd. is one of the few PV manufacturers that has 1.5 GW capacity in 2011 with a vertically integrated model, producing high-quality crystalline ingots, wafers, cells, and mono- and multi- crystalline PV panels. Its full control over the production chain allows the company to guarantee the highest quality for its products and a much more efficient cost structure. With these competitive advantages, Jinko Solar is able to pass benefits on to its customers around the world.

Reported by Jeanny H. Lim

What do you see as the trends and market forces driving PV technology in the second half of 2011?

For the last ten years, I have been following and tracking the positive trend in demand in the solar PV Industry, driven by the implementation of different programs to subsidize renewable energy in general and solar in particular, in different countries. At the same time, we have been enjoying a dramatic reduction of the cost structure of solar modules based on improvements in technology, increase on economies of scale and improvements in learning curve. Jinko Solar has positioned as the Top 3 producer in terms of competitive cost structure.

In the PV market, we have seen and suffered periods of shortage in strategic raw materials such as silicon and shortage of good quality modules in the market, followed by periods of clear oversupply, pushing both silicon costs and non-silicon costs to levels as we have not seen before, and more and more challenging, mainly for Western manufacturers and small producers.

PV technology has been a great engine to make this cost reduction to be possible and accelerated for the past years. The production of bigger ingots, the reduction to thinner wafers, the bigger cell size and the increase of efficiency are the most relevant improvements.

Vertically integrated production process, as in Jinko Solar, has become the clear competitive advantage to have not only a much better cost structure, but also a much better control on quality and logistic control, from the production of ingots, to the slice of the wafers, the texturing of the cells and the assembly of the modules.

For the reasons exposed above, we have been seeing since 2009 a lot of consolidation in our industry and for the second half of 2011, we’ll see many more consolidations as long as companies have difficulty to keep being competitive.

How are PV prices expected to develop in the second half?

We have seen in 2011 some important PV countries such as Germany and Italy, reducing their levels of feed-in tariffs, and a difficult Q1 due to long winter in Germany and uncertainty in Italy (due to a frozen period without definition of next subsidy scheme), therefore, the PV market already have been enjoying a hard reduction of module prices in the market and a reduction of the demand.

Jinko Solar has been one of the best performers in the first quarter of 2011, despite the difficulties, reaching much better results in shipments, revenues and gross profit than analyst expectation and company guidance.

The market has experienced such a reduction of prices during Q1 and beginning of Q2, that it had helped a lot to improve the return of investment in many projects despite the reduction of subsidies.

Probably in Q3, prices will be stable and we’ll see another rush to complete installations before the end of the year before another cut on subsidies driving the prices slightly. I cannot predict any further price reduction until December.

Where do you put your focus this year, in terms of business growth and technology development?

For Jinko Solar, our success during 2010 and the first quarter of 2011 is based mainly on our good definition and rapid implementation of our strategy, offering a reliable service to our customers, approaching locally to the markets with local offices in major PV markets, giving customers high-quality products thanks to our vertically integrated production process and our automatic assembly lines, achieving the recognition not only from well-known partners but also bankability from more than 20 banks in Europe, diversifying our geographical customer portfolio, entering in new countries and totalizing more than 18 countries where Jinko modules are sold.

Following these lines of action, for 2011, Jinko Solar will continue to capture market share in existing and developing countries such as Germany, Italy, Belgium, France, Spain and we’ll put most of our focus, for the second part of the year, especially in the U.S.A., India and Australia.

From the technology perspective, we’ll continue to increase cell efficiencies targeting 18.6%, reducing costs along the four steps of the vertical production process, improving quality controls and launching new developments increasing size of the modules.

Jeanny H. Lim is Editor-in-Chief of InterPV. Send your comments to swied@infothe.com.

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