Giga Solar Materials Corp (碩禾電子), the nation’s biggest solar materials producer, yesterday said that it exports most of its solar silver paste to Europe and China, rather than to the US, defying speculation about a potential patent infringement lawsuit in the US.
Giga Solar’s statement came after the Chinese-language Economic Daily News yesterday reported that US-based DuPont Co plans to file a patent infringement suit against the firm in the US.
DuPont also told other local solar cell manufacturers, including Gintech Energy Corp (昱晶), not to use solar silver paste from Giga Solar to avoid legal disputes, the newspaper reported.
“The company has no information about whether our customers use our solar silver paste in manufacturing products that are later shipped to the US,” Giga Solar said in a statement filed yesterday with the Taiwan Stock Exchange.
Gintech said it had not received any written warning from DuPont.
Giga Solar shares plunged 6.48 percent to NT$447.5 in Taipei trading yesterday, while Gintech shares fell 1.78 percent to NT$19.35.
Separately, Neo Solar Power Corp (新日光), the nation’s biggest solar cell maker, said it has signed a contract with Canadian Solar Inc to next year begin supplying 400 megawatt solar cells, deepening its partnership with the Ontario-based company.
The deal provides relief to Neo Solar after negative ripple effects from US anti-dumping and anti-subsidiary probes into Chinese and Taiwanese solar companies.
“We are glad that we have signed a major supply contract with Canadian Solar, which has been a long-term partner of Neo Solar since 2007, when Neo Solar began supplying solar cells to the company,” Neo Solar chairman Quincy Lin (林坤禧) said in a statement.
“This deal will help drive Neo Solar’s growth and will help Canadian Solar’s rapid business expansion next year,” Lin said.
Neo Solar attributed its NT$153 million (US$4.93 million) loss last quarter to a US investigation and preliminary tariff proposal.
The US dollar was trading at NT$29.7 at 10am today on the Taipei Foreign Exchange, as the New Taiwan dollar gained NT$1.364 from the previous close last week. The NT dollar continued to rise today, after surging 3.07 percent on Friday. After opening at NT$30.91, the NT dollar gained more than NT$1 in just 15 minutes, briefly passing the NT$30 mark. Before the US Department of the Treasury's semi-annual currency report came out, expectations that the NT dollar would keep rising were already building. The NT dollar on Friday closed at NT$31.064, up by NT$0.953 — a 3.07 percent single-day gain. Today,
‘SHORT TERM’: The local currency would likely remain strong in the near term, driven by anticipated US trade pressure, capital inflows and expectations of a US Fed rate cut The US dollar is expected to fall below NT$30 in the near term, as traders anticipate increased pressure from Washington for Taiwan to allow the New Taiwan dollar to appreciate, Cathay United Bank (國泰世華銀行) chief economist Lin Chi-chao (林啟超) said. Following a sharp drop in the greenback against the NT dollar on Friday, Lin told the Central News Agency that the local currency is likely to remain strong in the short term, driven in part by market psychology surrounding anticipated US policy pressure. On Friday, the US dollar fell NT$0.953, or 3.07 percent, closing at NT$31.064 — its lowest level since Jan.
Hong Kong authorities ramped up sales of the local dollar as the greenback’s slide threatened the foreign-exchange peg. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) sold a record HK$60.5 billion (US$7.8 billion) of the city’s currency, according to an alert sent on its Bloomberg page yesterday in Asia, after it tested the upper end of its trading band. That added to the HK$56.1 billion of sales versus the greenback since Friday. The rapid intervention signals efforts from the city’s authorities to limit the local currency’s moves within its HK$7.75 to HK$7.85 per US dollar trading band. Heavy sales of the local dollar by
The Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC) yesterday met with some of the nation’s largest insurance companies as a skyrocketing New Taiwan dollar piles pressure on their hundreds of billions of dollars in US bond investments. The commission has asked some life insurance firms, among the biggest Asian holders of US debt, to discuss how the rapidly strengthening NT dollar has impacted their operations, people familiar with the matter said. The meeting took place as the NT dollar jumped as much as 5 percent yesterday, its biggest intraday gain in more than three decades. The local currency surged as exporters rushed to
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