The detained shipment of product seized under the recently-enacted Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), first reported by ROTH Capital Partners, is believed to be product from JinkoSolar, according to reports shared with pv magazine USA by trusted industry sources.
According to the initial Roth note, the detained shipment is being withheld until the vendor provides documentation showing the source of the quartzite, the raw material for making polysilicon, though the vendor at the time was not named.
pv magazine has reached out to Jinko for comment on the detained shipment reports, and will provide said comment once it is received.
If the reports are confirmed, the result could be a much more dire situation than was initially regarded when the Department of Homeland Security Office of Strategy, Policy, and Plans released its June 17 strategy for preventing the importation of goods mined or produced using forced labor under the UFLPA.
Under that plan, only a handful of polysilicon suppliers with operations in Xinjiang were listed, along with MGS supplier Hoshine Silicon, and the action was seen as a best-case scenario for the solar industry, with other companies thought to be at-risk left off the list of banned imports.
It was also believed by ROTH at the time that companies which have already gone through the Hoshine WRO enforcement process would not be a focus of initial UFLPA enforcement, though the reported detention of Jinko product would prove this belief inaccurate.
The issue of quartzite documentation is an especially tricky one, as ROTH shares that, to its knowledge, none of the module vendors have quartzite documentation, and that two of the leading suppliers, Wacker and Hemlock semiconductor, would currently find it difficult to provide this information. It is possible that this is information the companies could provide, but doing so would take time. If the reports are confirmed, untold capacity of U.S.-bound product shipments could now be in jeopardy.
The same sources who provided reports on potentially detained Jinko shipments also believe that Trina Solar has had product detained, and pv magazine has reached out to Trina for comment on these additional reports.
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“Quartzite comes from mines across the United States in South Dakota, Texas, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Utah, Arizona and California. It’s also mined in the UK, Canada and Brazil.”
But this doesn’t provide enough to make all the solar panels we need in the US?
firstly the proposed retroactive import tarriff of the solar products from Ministry of Commerce, now the request of the documentation of the source of quartize comes in the way for the develoment of US clean energy….. Nobody knows how farther this farce will go and this must be manipulated by a friction of certain people..