REC Silicon – Update Regarding First Shipment of Ultra-High Purity Polysilicon
Moses Lake, Washington USA – September 13, 2024: REC Silicon ASA (“REC Silicon” or the “Company”) provides an operational update concerning the first shipment of ultra-high purity polysilicon from the recently restarted silane-based high-purity granular production facility in Moses Lake, Washington.
The Company is pleased to announce that following a series of modifications and mitigations in our process aimed at addressing a previously announced issue around higher than expected levels of an impurity in the product, all impurities have now been reduced to levels that are acceptable to our customer, and we have an agreement in principle to modify a specification subject to a final evaluation and qualification test, as is typical in the industry after such a modification.
The plant is running well, and the facility is now producing volumes for commercial shipments. Even though our production volumes are being ramped to the necessary level already, the first commercial shipment of product will need to be delayed to mid-October, to accommodate this final qualification step that our customer is undertaking.
Additionally, we can confirm that construction activities related to the restart of the Moses Lake facility are complete, including Silane IV and equipment will be started as needed during the planned ramp of capacity.
“Getting to this point and mitigating the previous impurity issue was the result of hard work by many dedicated personnel of the Company. We will soon be beginning a new phase for the facility where efforts are transitioning to continuous quality improvement to exceed the market standard, ramp-up, and optimization. There is still a large amount of work to be accomplished. We will strive to reach our full commercial production capacity as soon as we can while maintaining our focus on product quality. We appreciate the interactions with our customer in getting to this stage, our discussions have always centered around our aligned interests of our polysilicon enabling their efforts to create a complete PV solar value chain in the USA. This is demonstrably a positive outcome for both parties” says CEO Kurt Levens.
As a leading producer of silane gases and silicon materials, REC Silicon is well positioned to capitalize on the global megatrends of digitalization, energy transition and energy storage. The Company has developed a strong market position in the Semiconductor industry based on its operations in Butte, Montana. The successful restart of Moses Lake operations will enable REC Silicon to provide ultra-high purity polysilicon to the US solar value chain currently under construction while the Company also expects to supply silane gas in significant volumes for anode materials to a fast-growing battery industry.