Qcells has confirmed that the American customs and border protection (CBP) has retained a non -specific volume of his import of solar cells from South Korea. The company claims that the cells do not contain components of Xinjiang, China and says it works with CBP to solve the problem.
US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has a non -specific amount of solar cells that belong to the maker of solar equipment Qcells, the company said, the company said PV Magazine USA.
The detention came under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law that started to maintain CBP in mid -2022 to hide goods with forced labor in the Xinjiang region in China to enter the American market.
The company did not disclose the volume or value of the prisoner products. The CBP -Dashboard For UFLPA enforcement statistics, it appears that the agency recorded seven shipments in June with a value of $ 3.37 million electronic products, a category that is usually considered to include solar panels and component and batteries. The dashboard suggests that the attacks were the first detents of electronic products from South Korea since the UFLPA enforcement began.
Qcells says that the detained cells do not contain any material from Xinjiang, China, the company refutes every CBP confusing that does this, and it hopes that the detention will be resolved quickly.
“Everything in our most recent supply chain is non-China,” said Scott Moskowitz, vice-president of Qcells of market strategy and industrial matters.
Moskowitz said that the company cooperates with CBP to document and clarify the origin of the cells and to hope that the problem will be resolved “relatively quickly”.
“It’s a routine inspection,” said Moskowitz.
The UFLPA promotion marks an abrupt show in detention of electronic equipment from South Korea. Qcells is owned by Hanwha Solutions, a South Korean conglomerate. The American import of the company’s cells comes from its factories in South Korea and Malaysia.
On American soil, Qcells runs the first domestic vertically integrated crystalline-silicon solar production site since the collapse of Solarworld Americas Inc. In 2018, which had operated such a factory outside Portland, Oregon. While cell production in his factory in Cartersville, Georgia, up, the company said it wants to reduce the dependence on imported cells for the production of American modules.
The company said that the detention of the entry is part of an expected escalation of enforcement of trade measures in general and of the UFLPA specifically.
If this is the case, the escalation further complicates the short-term drive of the domestic solar industry to breathe new life into a stable cell supply for domestic solar production, considered an important weak link in the American solar supply chain. American commercial rights in the field of solar input and foreign ownership entity (FEOC) restrictions that influence the use of Chinese inputs belong to extra factors that are likely to be domestic cell supplies in Bedevil.
While some domestic production operators, such as missionary energy and T1 energy, apparently continue with cell factory projects, others, such as a Meyer Burger (cell), have drawn the plugs on their cell production plans.
The domestic production of solar cells with a higher volume is the long -term key to unlocking faster progress when reducing the production of solar stray assignments on American soil, Said Moskowitz.
In the meantime, UFLPA detention of the import of electronics are not new. CBP has held more than a estimated 1,600 shipments with a value of more than $ 800 million since the enforcement of the UFLPA began.
In March, for example, the PBP formally denied Maxeon’s protests against arrests of more than 160 of his shipments of solar panels on the American market from the production locations in Mexico. The dispute is underway.
CBP has also held the American solar import of Chinese companies Longi Solar and Jinkosolar for UFLPA inspection. The agency usually does not reveal a definitive decision on detained input.
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