The polycrystalline silicon industry is facing severe challenges, and the market clearing process may be more complicated than expected.

The current polycrystalline silicon industry is facing severe challenges, and the market clearing process may be more complex than expected. For the market to stabilize in the future, it not only needs to see greater certainty in inventory decline, but also to wait for a substantive rebound in end-market demand and the gradual rebuilding of market confidence. The current sharp and rapid drop in prices will not only fail to stimulate demand; instead, it will intensify a wait-and-see and risk-avoidance sentiment across the entire industrial chain, prolonging the time it takes the market to bottom out. Therefore, from the perspective of enterprises, they should arrange their sales cadence reasonably based on their own cost and cash-flow conditions; irrational price cuts would further erode the industry’s overall profit margins and are not conducive to healthy long-term development. At the same time, companies should strengthen information exchange on the market, build greater consensus on supply-and-demand conditions, stabilize market expectations, and reduce misjudgments and malicious price undercutting caused by information asymmetry. Only when upstream and downstream enterprises make jointly rational decisions can the industry move out of the downturn sooner and achieve high-quality, sustainable development. (China Nonferrous Metals Industry Association, Silicon Industry Branch)