By Steve Toloken
STAFF REPORTER / ASIA BUREAU CHIEF
Published: May 22, 2014 12:34 pm ET
Updated: May 22, 2014 1:08 pm ET
Image By: DuPont Co.
DuPont set up its DuPont Apollo Ltd. subsidiary in Hong Kong in 2008, but a tough market is prompting it to shut down the group by the end of the year.
DuPont Co. is closing a Chinese subsidiary manufacturing photovoltaic film solar energy modules, but the company says it remains committed more broadly to supplying materials to the solar market.
The Wilmington, Del.-based company said it will shut down its Hong Kong-based DuPont Apollo Ltd. subsidiary, which makes amorphous silicon thin film modules using ethylene vinyl acetate polymer as encapsulate and glass materials, in the face of tough market conditions. The shutdown will come by the end of the year.
The unit has a manufacturing plant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, and a research lab in the Hong Kong Science Park.
“This decision was taken consistent with the company’s discipline of continually reviewing its portfolio and focusing on high-growth, high-margin opportunities,” Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont said in a statement.
DuPont set up the unit in 2008, and executives told Plastics News at the time that one of Apollo’s targets was tapping into an expected increase in photovoltaic solar cell use in China.
But the investment fell victim to market overcapacity and a move by the industry to other technologies. A company executive told Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post in a May 21 story that the market became much more difficult.
Image By: DuPont Co.
Despite closing its solar film subsidiary this year, DuPont said it remains committed to the broader solar energy industry.
“The state of the silicon thin-film solar module market segment has changed dramatically in recent years and market conditions for this segment continue to deteriorate,” said DuPont Apollo Chairman Chuck Xu Chengzeng.
The paper said about 100 engineers and scientists in the Hong Kong research facility would be transferred or offered severance.
In its statement, DuPont said that independent of the Apollo decision, the company would remain a leading supplier of a range of other materials to the broader solar power industry. It said installations in the solar energy market are estimated to grow 20 percent a year over the next several years.
The company’s products in solar energy include polyvinyl fluoride and polyimine films, specialized PET resins and EVA materials.
According to a 2009 DuPont announcement, the 538,000 square foot Shenzhen factory had a capacity to manufacture modules generating 50 megawatts of power a year. It said at the time the technology would be more cost effective and would use 1/200th the silicon used by crystalline silicon solar cells. | 
