China Industry: Oct. 20

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Oct. 20 – This is a regular series of relevant industry news from around China.

Air transport
Russian Yakutia Airline started flying between Blagoveshchensk, Russia and Harbin, China, from October 9. The company operates the regular route once a week using An-140 aircraft.

American Airlines said it had obtained approval from the U.S. Department of Transportation to start daily Los Angeles – Shanghai flights from April 5. The company will fly the route using 247-seat Boeing 777 aircraft.

Taiwan and the United Kingdom signed an aviation agreement last Wednesday to boost the number of passenger and cargo services between them. Under the contract, China Airlines and EVA Airways will be able to operate 21 passenger services to the United Kingdom a week. The carriers will increase the number of their services to London to 14 a week from the current 10. The agreement also allows CAL and EVA to operate seven passenger services a week between Manchester and Taipei. The companies are also allowed to increase the frequency of cargo services to Manchester to 10 a week from the current three. The air carrier will continue to service three cargo flights a week to London. The air carriers may initiate the new services from March 27, 2011 when they release their summer schedules.

Xiamen Airlines, a company of China Southern Airlines, will purchase 10 Boeing 737 aircraft, thus increasing the capacity of its fleet by 2.3 percent. China Southern said that the aircraft’s list price is approximately US$699 million. Xiamen Airlines will received the aircraft between 2015 and 2016.

Hong Kong International Airport said that its September passenger throughput was 4.1 million, an increase of 16.9 percent compared to the same month last year. The airport’s September cargo volume surged 13.9 percent to 346,000 tons. Aircraft landings and takeoffs rose 15.9 percent to 26,140. For the first nine months of 2010, HKIA’s passenger count was 38 million, an increase of 10.9 percent compared to the same period in 2009. Cargo throughput rose 28.7 percent to 3 million tons and air traffic movements went up 8.2 percent to 224,890.

Solar power
U.S. computer and electronic components manufacturer Foxconn Electronics and Chinese photovoltaic equipment maker Yingli Green Energy will set up a polycrystalline silicon factory in China. The companies will initially invest US$4 billion in the facility and then pour in a further US$200 million. The plant, to be located in China’s Shanxi Province, will produce 27,000 tons of poly-Si per year and will also have a solar cell production line with rated capacity of 1 gigawatt annually.

Chinese photovoltaic products manufacturer JinkoSolar Holding Co. said today it has set up a U.S. subsidiary to bolster its business expansion in North America. Chinese photovoltaic equipment-maker Yingli Green Energy will expand the manufacturing capacity of its solar power components by adding extra lines with a combined capacity of 700 megawatts. The company announced on Friday that it will build 600 megawatts of PANDA mono-crystalline silicon-based manufacturing lines in each of mono-crystalline ingots and wafers, cells and modules at its Baoding headquarters.

The project will be realized via its wholly-owned subsidiary Yingli Energy (China) Co Ltd. Additional 100 megawatts of multi-crystalline silicon-based manufacturing lines will be built in Haikou, Hainan Province, southern China. As a result of the expansion program, which is expected to complete in mid-2011, the company’s manufacturing capacity will increase to 1.7 gigawatts.

Wind power
Chinese wind turbine maker Sinovel Wind Group will deliver generators for two offshore wind farms in China’s Jiangsu Province with a total capacity of 600 megawatts. The two facilities are part of a total of four wind projects with a combined capacity of 1,000 megawatts tendered by the Chinese government at the beginning of September 2010.

Wind power company China Longyuan Power Group announced it had won a bid to build a 200 megawatt offshore wind farm near the city of Dafeng in eastern China. The wind farm, whose center is located 30 kilometers away from the shore, will consist of 80 wind power generators, each with a capacity of 2.5 megawatts.

China Suntien Green Energy reported on Monday a net profit of US$22 million for the first half of 2010, up by 81.5 percent year-on-year.

China Windpower Group Limited is planning to launch a 50 megawatt wind project in China in 2011. This will be the firm’s first offshore wind project in Nantong and in Jiangsu Province.

The firm currently has 22 wind farms with a total installed capacity of 1,213 megawatts. It intends to raise this capacity by over 650 megawatts as early as 2010 and to invest US$748 million in this undertaking. In a longer-term plan, China Windpower will be lifting its capacity by 700 megawatts each year, so that it reaches 5,000 megawatts in 2015.

This industry report brief is courtesy of Aii Data Processing.