U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has detained an unspecified quantity of solar cells belonging to solar equipment maker Qcells, the company exclusively confirmed for pv magazine USA.
The detention came under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA), a law that CBP began enforcing in mid-2022 to bar goods made with forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region from entering the U.S. market.
The company did not disclose the detained products’ volume or value. The CBP dashboard for UFLPA enforcement statistics shows that in June, the agency detained seven shipments from South Korea valued at a combined $3.37 million of electronics products, a category considered mostly to encompass solar panels and components as well as batteries. The dashboard suggests that the seizures were the first detentions of electronic products from that country since UFLPA enforcement began.
Qcells says the detained cells contain no material from the Xinjiang Region, the company is rebutting any CBP presumption that it does, and it hopes for the detention to be swiftly resolved.
“Everything in our latest supply chain is non-China,” said Scott Moskowitz, Qcells’ vice president of market strategy and industry affairs.
Moskowitz said the company is working with CBP to document and clarify sourcing origins of the cells and hoping for the issue to resolve “relatively quick.”
“It’s a routine inspection,” Moskowitz said.
The UFLPA action marks an abrupt showing in detentions of electronic gear from South Korea. Qcells is owned by Hanwha Solutions, a South Korean conglomerate. The company’s U.S. imports of cells originate in its factories in South Korea and Malaysia.
On U.S. soil, Qcells is ramping up the first domestic vertically integrated crystalline-silicon solar manufacturing site since the 2018 collapse of SolarWorld Americas Inc., which had operated such a factory outside of Portland, Oregon. As cell production rises in the Cartersville, Ga., plant, the company aims to lighten its reliance on cell imports for U.S. domestic production of modules.
About Jan. 1, the Carterville operations are projected to reach 3.3 gigawatts in annual production capacity at each of the four steps of crystalline-silicon solar manufacturing: fabrication of silicon ingots and solar wafers, cells and modules. At capacity, the production site is expected to employ about half of the company’s nearly 4,000 U.S. manufacturing workers.
The company views the detention of its imports as part of an expected escalation of enforcement of trade measures generally and of the UFLPA specifically.
If so, the escalation further complicates the domestic solar industry’s short-term drive to revive a stable cell supply for domestic solar production, considered an important weak link in the U.S. solar supply chain. U.S. trade duties on solar imports and foreign-owned-entity-concern (FEOC) restrictions affecting use of Chinese inputs are among additional factors that are likely to bedevil domestic cell supplies.
While some domestic manufacturing operators, such as Mission Solar Energy and T1 Energy, are ostensibly pushing ahead with cell factory projects, others, such as a Meyer Burger (cell), have pulled the plugs on their cell-production plans.
Higher-volume domestic production of solar cells is the long-term key to unlocking faster progress on re-onshoring manufacturing of solar gear on U.S. soil, Moskowitz said.
In March, for instance, CBP formally denied Maxeon’s protests against detentions of more than 160 of its shipments of solar panels into the U.S. market from its manufacturing sites in Mexico. The dispute has been ongoing.
CBP also has detained U.S. solar imports of Chinese companies LONGi Solar and JinkoSolar for UFLPA inspection. The agency typically does not disclose final disposition of detained imports.
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