Mothballed Moses Lake Silicon Plant to Restart Operations in 2023

The idled REC Silicon plant in Moses Lake will start up operations next year under a new agreement.

The company has a letter of intent with silocon manufacturer Ferroglobe to establish a solar supply chain in the U.S.

It will enable a re-start of the currently idle REC Silicon plant in Moses Lake to produce solar grade polysilicon for use in in solar panels.

The plant was shut down in July of 2019 because of unstable market conditions and Chinese tariffs on polysilicon.

The agreement with Ferroglobe as well as investment into REC Silicon by South Korea based business conglomerate Hanwha Group will let the Moses Lake plant to reopen a year ahead of its target date of 2023.

REC's CEO and President James May II wrote in a letter in the company's March financial reports that "the necessary building blocks to support the restart of the Moses Lake facility are coming together."

Recent investment by the Hanwha Group into REC Silicon, in conjunction with Hanwha’s subsidiary Qcells, has allowed REC to expand its long-standing relationship with Ferroglobe and plan for the immediate development of an end-to-end U.S. solar supply chain from raw silicon, to polysilicon, and finally fully assembled modules .