Views: 0 Author: Site Editor Publish Time: 2025-04-27 Origin: Site
Recently, Japanese solar energy manufacturer TOYO announced that its solar cell factory located in Ethiopia has officially started production on April 4th, 2025, with an annual production capacity of 2GW. This marks the official launch of the company's local manufacturing layout on the African continent. According to the plan, the factory will deliver over 80MW of solar cell products to customers by the end of April 2025, and will increase its monthly production capacity to 150-200MW in May and June to achieve full production capacity.
In March this year, TOYO announced its plan to increase the annual production capacity of its battery factory in Ethiopia from 2GW to 4GW due to "strong external customer demand". The aim is to supply core battery cells for its newly-built 2GW module factory in Texas, USA. TOYO's Chairman and CEO, Junsei Ryu, said: "We are very optimistic about the current strong market demand and are fully committed to the expansion plan of adding 2GW to the Ethiopian factory."
When TOYO's factory in Ethiopia started production, it coincided with the fact that the US Department of Commerce imposed high "anti-dumping and anti-subsidy" tariffs on solar cells and components from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam. This move made local component manufacturers in the US eager to seek new tax-free supply channels for solar cells.
Christian Roselund, a senior policy analyst at Clean Energy Associates, wrote on LinkedIn: "Although most battery manufacturing has shifted from the four Southeast Asian countries, this tariff will completely eliminate the remaining capacity in these countries and hinder the recovery of their battery manufacturing businesses." Additionally, Philip Shen, a partner and senior analyst at Roth Capital, predicted that the next round of "anti-dumping and countervailing" investigations targeting India, Indonesia, and Laos is expected to be initiated before the end of the second quarter of 2025.
