Canadian Solar Wins Chinese OK

Canadian Solar Inc. (CSIQ) announced that its photovoltaic (PV) reliability testing center in Changshu, China received the highest international accreditation standard (ISO/IEC17025) from CNAS (China National Accreditation Service for Conformity Assessment) for conformity assessment.

CNAS is the Chinese organization solely responsible for the accreditation of certification, laboratory and inspection organizations.  CNAS is also recognized internationally, and is part of the international accreditation multilateral recognition system, International Accreditation Forum (IAF), the Pacific Accreditation Cooperation (PAC), IAF Multilateral Recognition Arrangement (MLA) and PAC MLA, and International Laboratory Accreditation.

Canadian Solar is known in the solar industry for producing high quality PV modules with seamless production process control. Today’s accreditation further demonstrates its expertise in photovoltaic manufacturing and adherence to quality.

The accreditation comes at an opportune moment for the company. Canadian Solar is one of the largest solar module producers in the world, but it generates the majority of its revenues from the European market (72.7% of revenues in the first quarter of 2009), while Asia generated only 21.8%.  However, its European topline year-over-year shrank by almost 75%. To bridge the gap, the company is actively cultivating Asian markets such as China and Japan.

In Japan, Canadian Solar is planning an annual turnover of 12,000KW of solar cells by supplying products to three domestic sales companies.  As per Green Tec Company, one of its customers, Canadian Solar’s products have a distinct cost advantage over Japanese competitors.

Also, the “Sleeping Dragon” hasn’t been tapped properly by the company to this point, either. China is aiming for an installed solar power capacity of 2GW by 2011 from 140MW capacity at the end of fiscal 2008.

However, the road ahead isn’t smooth as Canadian Solar has to compete with a large number of competitors in China.  Top competitors included in our coverage are SunPower Corporation (SPWRA) and First Solar, Inc. (FSLR). Our HOLD recommendation on CSIQ remains unchanged.

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Comment by Your Solar Green Shop

2009-07-27 20:16:12

It appears that China is extremely interested in converting to solar; when will the US get that interested? I hope soon, I am betting my future on it.

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