TBEA Co, one of the national giants in the power transmission and transformation industry, made an announcement on March 1 stating its intention to invest 8.80 billion yuan ($1.32 billion) in the production of 100,000 metric tons of polycrystalline silicon in Baotou in North China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region - just three weeks after the city launched its investment plan to produce 200,000 metric tons of the material.

The TBEA Co program has been developed to further enhance the company's core competitiveness. A total of 99,050 metric tons of polycrystalline silicon and by-products including trichlorosilane and sodium hydroxide will be produced.

It has been estimated that when electronic grade polycrystalline silicon is sold at 60,000 yuan per metric ton, the annual sales revenue will be 6.09 billion yuan, with annual profits amounting to 1.18 billion yuan.

The program will take one and a half years to construct. After a three-month preliminary test, the program will enter its production phase lasting 15.5 years.

The Reformed Siemens Process is commonly used to produce polycrystalline silicon, and production costs will decrease with the larger production scale. However, it is possible that the technique might be nudged out of the market along with improvements in amorphous silicon photovoltaic technology.

TBEA Co believes that, so far, polycrystalline silicon still enjoys a market niche due to the high conversion rate and long lifespan of polycrystalline silicon solar cells, which is why they are still considered to be the mainstream product in the new energy industry.