Japanese electronics firm Kyocera Corp will supply 204,000 kilowatts of solar cells to a Thai power company in a deal valued at 30-40 billion yen ($359 million), the Nikkei business daily said.
Kyocera will manufacture about 1 million polysilicon solar cells in Japan and ship them to Bangkok-based Solar Power Co over a period of three to four years, the daily said.
This is the biggest solar cell order that a Japanese company has received from a single customer, with the previous highest being the 73,000 kw-order bagged by Sharp Corp, the Nikkei said.
Kyocera has previously supplied 6,000 kw of cells to Solar Power, the newspaper said.
Kyocera slipped to seventh place in market share last year from fifth in 2008 as American and Chinese rivals stepped up production, and hopes to leverage on the order from Solar Power to expand its business, the business daily said.
Kyocera plans to strengthen its production capacity by 50 percent to 600,000 kw by March 2011, and 1 million kilowatts by March 2013, the Nikkei said.
($1=83.55 YEN)
