* Options include modules from Ontario site
* Could set up manufacturing in United States
SAN JOSE, Calif. March 19 (Reuters) – China’s JinkoSolar
Holding Co, one of the fastest-growing solar
manufacturers, has some options to fall back on if the United
States comes down hard against Chinese companies on Tuesday in a
trade dispute, a Jinko executive said.
The U.S. government is expected to throw its weight behind
domestic solar panel producers in their battle against
lower-priced imports from China that they say threaten the
future of the industry in the United States.
“We’re watching that very closely. We have a couple back-up
plans that we’re evaluating already,” Isabelle Christensen,
director of North American operations for JinkoSolar, said in an
interview at trade show PV America West in San Jose, California.
Those options include selling modules from the company’s
Ontario site instead, she said, while Jinko was also looking at
possibly setting up manufacturing sites in Mexico or somewhere
in the United States, such as New Mexico or Mississippi.
The U.S. Commerce Department will announce preliminary
countervailing or anti-subsidy duties on Tuesday, in response to
a complaint raised by a coalition of seven U.S. manufacturers,
which says Chinese panels are state-subsidized and “dumped” in
the United States at unfairly low prices.
Christensen said she expected 2012 to be another challenging
year for the industry as a whole, with panel prices coming down
further before stabilizing by the fourth quarter.
Apart from key U.S. markets such as California, Arizona, New
Jersey and Colorado, she said Jinko was targeting China and
South Africa, as well as the Caribbean and Mexico — the latter
two markets because their electricity prices are high enough to
drive solar adoption without government support.
