China Himin Solar Co. Ltd., is forming up a Joint Venture manufacturing plant in India. Its chairman, Huang Ming, said at the Delhi International Renewable Energy Conference 2010, that his firm was in talks with the Indian side to build a 50:50 Joint Venture in Delhi area to produce solar water heaters
The Chinese side will provide technology and production line with its Indian partner as well as marketing. The initial capacity will be 10,000 to 50,000 square meters with ultimate capacity at 1M square meter plant.
The plant will mainly assembly components imported from China in the initial stage, said Huang.
This is indeed good news (not the importing of components from China, but the fact that one of the world’s largest solar water heater companies is setting up base in India). I had been waxing eloquent on the subject of solar water heaters in this blog (see here, here and here).
China is undoubtedly the world leader in solar water heaters (with over 65% of the total area of solar water heating worldwide). Himin alone has a production capacity of 3 million solar water heaters per year (source), and China has 27 million rooftops with solar water heaters installed. Compare this to the total Indian solar water heaters installed – about 0.5 million!
(Here are some more data on the China solar water heater market).
