Trinasolar says working on plan to set up manufacturing unit in India

China-based Trinasolar is working on its plan to set up a manufacturing unit in India to tap the over 10 GW annual solar equipment market in the country, a company official said.

The company is very much in talks with partners like investors, manufacturers and developers for setting up manufacturing unit in India, Executive Vice President of Trinasolar Yin Rong Fang, told reporters here at the launch of it product Trinahome.

The company has land near Visakhapatnam which was acquired in 2015 for setting up manufacturing plant here. About three years ago company wanted to set up a plant to manufacture 500 to 700 MW of solar equipment annually. But now this could be even higher in view of India's annual market size of 10 GW of solar equipment.

The plant would require at least half a billion US dollar investment as per the estimates worked out earlier by the company.

Commenting on the recently imposed safeguard duty on solar equipment, Yin was of the view that its impact may be big in short term but in long-term renewables market would grow in India as has been the case elsewhere in the world.

He told that solar business from commercial and residential constitute 40 per cent in China and 60 per cent in Europe which were earlier mainly power producers markets.

Citing the case of the US, he said that the market has grown to the size of 9.5 GW which would be 11 GW next year and a majority of it is from commercial and residential segments.

"Trina Solar supplied 3.5GW, so we accounted for 15 per cent of the total. That means we are the clear market leader here in India."