China Industry: December 15

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Dec. 15 – This is a regular series of relevant industry news from around China.

Air transport
Vietnam Airlines and Hong Kong-based Vietlink International Travel Company have started a direct service between Da Nang in Vietnam and Hong Kong, China Daily Information reported. The service will be operated two times a week between November 26 and May 3. Vietnam Airlines will use Airbus 321 aircraft to fly on the route.

Vietnam Airlines will also start flying between Ho Chi Minh City and Beijing from December 16, VietnamPlus reported. The company will operate the new direct service three times per week with an Airbus A321 aircraft.

Hainan Airlines has started flying between Beijing and Toronto, China Economic Review reported. The company will operate the service three times a week using Airbus A340 aircraft. The airline is the first in China to provide flights between the two cities.

South Korean budget airline Jinair said it started flying between Seoul and Macau on November 29. The company operates the route five times a week.

Turkish Airlines said that it will launch a service between Istanbul and Guangzhou on January 30, 2011. The airline will fly on this route three times week. The company added that it will increase the frequency of its Istanbul – Beijing flights to seven from five a week from December 22, 2010. Turkish Airlines will also increase the frequency of its Shanghai service to seven from five a week from December 20, 2010.

Taiwanese Eva Airways Corporation and its regional subsidiary UNI Air said on December 7 that they will initiate new services to China. Eva started flying between Taipei’s Taoyuan International Airport and Zhengzhou in China two times a week starting December 10, 2010. Moreover, the company will commence one regular weekly charter between Taoyuan and Jinan, China, from December 18.

Uni Air will start flying between Taiwan’s Taichung and China’s Ningbo on December 20.

Taiwanese China Airlines said on December 8 that it will recruit 120 pilots in Taiwan in 2011 under its fleet and services expansion strategy. The company will seek to hire 90 experienced pilots and 30 trainees, boosting the number of its pilots to more than 1,000.

Taiwanese China Airlines also said earlier this month it will start flying between Taoyuan and Auckland, New Zealand from January 1, 2011. The service is an extension to the existing service Taoyuan – Brisbane, Australia, the company added. The airline will operate the route three times a week using Airbus 330-300 aircraft.

Chinese budget airline Spring Airlines Co will commence flights between Hong Kong and Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province on December 23, China Industry Daily News reported, citing unnamed sources. The airline will also offer a bus service connecting Beijing and Shijiazhuang Airport.

Solar power
Chinese photovoltaic product-maker LDK Solar today said it reached the designed capacity of 5,000 tons of its second polysilicon train in the Mahong plant. The plant, which has a design capacity of 15,000 tons, includes three 5,000-ton trains. So far LDK Solar has boosted its production capacity to 10,000 tons.

“Reaching capacity of the second train […] will greatly expand LDK Solar’s access to polysilicon and support our growing demand from our customers,” the company’s chief operating officer, Xingxue Tong, said.

Chinese photovoltaic products-maker ET Solar said on December 1 that it will ship over 50 megawatts of solar modules to the United Kingdom in 2011. The company has so far landed contractual and framework agreements with the UK distributors and installers for the next year.

The ET Solar’s orders in the country are attributed to the new feed-in-tariff policy introduced earlier this year. In the third quarter of 2010, ET Solar received a UK Microgeneration Certification Scheme certificate from the British Standard Institution on mono- and multi-crystalline modules.

“As an early bird in the UK PV market, ET Solar is very well poised to expand our presence and further build up customer relationships in the UK market in 2011,” Dennis She, the CEO of ET Solar, noted.

Chinese solar energy company Yingli Green Energy said it on December 2 it would supply 70 percent of the photovoltaic panels for 272 megawatts of solar plant projects to be set up under China’s solar program. The Golden Sun Program is funded by the Chinese Ministry of Finance.

The company said most of the shipments were slated for the second half of 2011 under sales contracts with project owners, without announcing financial details of the contracts. Yingli added that under the program it would receive 70 percent subsidy from the Ministry of Finance, after it closes the sales agreements and executes the required applications procedures.

Yingli Green Chairman and CEO Liansheng Miao said the deal was a considerable milestone for the company’s growth in the domestic solar market. He said also “we expect this strategic move in emerging markets will further reduce the dependence on the German market, thus strengthening our long-term development dynamics”.

China expects to boost its photovoltaic projects pipeline in the next two years to 1,000 megawatts per year at least after 2012, Liansheng Miao added.

Chinese solar power equipment maker Apollo Solar Energy Inc said on December 3 it had agreed to sell a 30-megawatt silicon thin-film solar module production line for US$39.3 million to a domestic sector firm. The company did not provide further details on the purchaser, saying that it was a thin-film modules producer that has no connection to Apollo.

Solar power firm China Gogreen Assets Investment Ltd said it will install 20 megawatts of solar photovoltaic power systems in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, under an investment agreement with the state Administration Committee. The company will invest some US$ 45 million in the project, using bank loans and cash on hand.

Chinese photovoltaic products-maker LDK Solar said it has signed a wafer and polysilicon supply deal with a subsidiary of Chinese energy firm Lu’an Group. Under the contract, LDK Solar will deliver to Shanxi Lu’an Photovoltaic Technology 120 megawatts of solar wafers from January 2011 to December 2012 and 2,000 tons of polysilicon from January 2011 to February 2013. LDK Solar did not announce any financial details on the agreement.

Wind power
China Suntien Green Energy said on December 3 it had registered its 49.5-megawatt Kangbao Sanxiatian wind farm with the clean development mechanism of the Kyoto protocol. The registration is seen to add some US$ 1.5 million to the company’s earnings in 2011 and 2012. To date, China Suntien has seven projects registered with the CDM executive board.

Wind turbine-maker China Ming Yang Wind Power Group said on December 3 it had agreed to work together with the Hebei Province government in northern China on a number of wind power developments.

The deal will help Ming Yang expand its operations and bolster its market share in China, the company said. Under the memorandum of understanding between the two parties, Ming Yang will set up a carbon filter factory to make 3 megawatt to 6 megawatt wind turbine blades and battery systems for wind/solar hybrid energy storage systems. The local government also plans to award Ming Yang and other utility firms projects to install at least 1 gigawatt of solar and wind power capacity around the city of Chengde and 2 gigawatts of offshore wind energy capacity.

Hebei has huge offshore and onshore wind power potential as it is located between the Inner Mongolian Plateau and the Bohai Sea.

Chinese Huadian Power International Corp said on December 6 it had received the thumbs-up from the Development and Reform Commission of Ningxia Hui autonomous region in north-central China for a 49.5-megawatt wind farm project. This year, Huadian Power has already got the authorities’ permission to install a total of 247.5 megawatts of wind power.

China Development Bank is interested in participating in renewable energy projects in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian power utility Elektroprivreda BiH said last Friday. The projects include the construction of a wind power plant on the Podvelezje Plateau and hydropower plants on the rivers Bosna and Drina. Elektroprivreda BiH disclosed no further details on the projects.

This industry report brief is courtesy of Aii Data Processing.