REC Silicon, a Norwegian producer of silane gas and silicon, has said it will make its first commercial shipment of ultra-high purity polysilicon from its newly restarted Moses Lake facility in Washington state in October.
The company said the plant is “running well” and meeting production volumes for commercial shipments, with impurities reduced to customer acceptable levels.
However, shipping has been delayed until mid-October due to a final qualification step by the customer.
The Moses Lake facility closed its doors March 2020after being influenced by then US President Donald Trump’s trade negotiations with China. Plans for the reopening were unveiled in June 2022 and production was restarted November 2023following a ten-year take-or-pay supply agreement for high-purity fluidized bed reactor granular polysilicon with South Korea’s Qcells.
The latest update from REC Silicon adds that all construction activities associated with the venue’s reopening are now complete.
The company said the restart will allow it to “deliver ultra-high purity polysilicon to the U.S. solar value chain.” It also expects to supply silane gas in “significant volumes for anode materials to a rapidly growing battery industry.”
“We will soon begin a new phase for the facility as efforts transition to continuous quality improvement to exceed market standards, ramp-up and optimization,” said CEO Kurt Levens. “There is still a large amount of work to be done. We will strive to reach our full commercial production capacity as quickly as possible, while maintaining our focus on product quality.”
In February, REC Silicon said its wholly owned subsidiary, REC Advanced Silicon Materials LLC, was to block polysilicon production capacity at the Butte, Montana plant, primarily due to regional structural imbalances in electricity supply and demand.
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