U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) released shipments of South Korean cell imports bound for Qcells’ module factory in Georgia after earlier denying them U.S. entry in connection with the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA).
Qcells exclusively confirmed the detention for an Aug. 6 pv magazine USA article, which reported the denial as part of an apparent rise in UFLPA examinations and detentions of many types of manufactured imports, including solar-technology products.
Company spokesperson Marta Stoepker confirmed that CBP had “completed its review” and “released Qcells’ shipments” without offering further specifics.
“Recognizing the importance of this matter, we will continue to cooperate with CBP to ensure ongoing compliance,” Stoepker said in a statement.
Qcells has not publicly detailed the volume of the cell imports detained for review under the UFLPA, which CBP started enforcing in 2022 to stop goods fabricated by forced labor working in China’s Xinjiang region from entering the U.S. market.
The CBP dashboard for UFLPA enforcement statistics for June showed that the agency detained seven shipments valued at a combined $3.37 million of electronics products, a category considered mostly to encompass solar and battery technology. The dashboard suggested the seizures were the first detentions of electronic products from South Korea since enforcement of the UFLPA got under way.
Qcells said the detained cells contained no material from Xinjiang. The company – owned by Hanwha Solutions, a South Korean conglomerate – imports cells from its factories in South Korea and Malaysia to feed its U.S. module-assembly operations in Georgia.
Qcells is ramping up a domestic vertically integrated crystalline-silicon solar manufacturing site in Cartersville, north of Atlanta, where it expects the ramp of a cell-fabrication plant will wean its U.S. operations from reliance on cell imports.
By early 2026 in Cartersville, Qcells aims 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.
The company has said it sees the detention of its imports as part of an escalation of enforcement of trade measures generally and of the UFLPA specifically.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which chairs a federal Forced Labor Enforcement Task Force, announced in an Aug. 19 release that it had added steel, copper, lithium, caustic soda, and red dates as high-priority sectors for UFLPA.
The release quotes DHS Secretary Kristi Noem suggesting that the Trump administration is stepping up enforcement action.
“America has a moral, economic, and national security duty to eradicate threats that endanger our nation’s prosperity, including unfair trade practices that disadvantage the American people and stifle our economic growth,” Noem is quoted as saying. “The use of slave labor is repulsive, and we will hold Chinese companies accountable for abuses and eliminate threats its forced labor practices pose to our prosperity.”
The release said up to Aug. 1, CBP had stopped more than 16,700 shipments worth nearly $3.7 billion for UFLPA examination in 2025. Among those, CBP denied more than 10,000 shipments valued at nearly $900 million.
This content is protected by copyright and may not be reused. If you want to cooperate with us and would like to reuse some of our content, please contact: editors@pv-magazine.com.
By submitting this form you agree to pv magazine using your data for the purposes of publishing your comment.
Your personal data will only be disclosed or otherwise transmitted to third parties for the purposes of spam filtering or if this is necessary for technical maintenance of the website. Any other transfer to third parties will not take place unless this is justified on the basis of applicable data protection regulations or if pv magazine is legally obliged to do so.
You may revoke this consent at any time with effect for the future, in which case your personal data will be deleted immediately. Otherwise, your data will be deleted if pv magazine has processed your request or the purpose of data storage is fulfilled.
Further information on data privacy can be found in our Data Protection Policy.