JinkoSolar Power, a subsidiary of Chinese solar photovoltaic cell manufacturer JinkoSolar Holding, has signed a three-year line of credit (LoC) agreement with Chinese joint stock commercial lender Ping An Bank.
Jinko Power will be using the CNY3-billion ($483.2 million) loan to support development of its photovoltaic projects.
The solar company will be using the first installment of CNY630 million to support development of photovoltaic solar power projects in Inner Mongolia, Guangdong province, and Zhejiang province, a company statement says.
With growth in the solar energy market in China, several commercial banks have followed policy banks in funding downstream solar projects.
According to Xiande Li, the chairman of JinkoSolar, the agreement with Ping An Bank follows “banking facility agreements with China Development Bank and China Minsheng Bank”. This is “another credit facility that we have signed with a tier-I bank to finance our downstream projects”, according to Xiande.
Earlier this month, Jinko Power had signed a $150-million loan agreement with Credit Suisse and other financial institutions to expand portfolio of its subsidiary JinkoSolar Power Engineering Group in China.
The company planned to use the funds to expand capacity of JinkoSolar by 1.4 gigawatts. Credit Suisse acted as the sole arranger and led the consortium of investors in the financing.
According to a statement, the loan agreement provides 18-month senior secured term loan to Jinko Power.
In June, JinkoSolar (US) got its credit limit with Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, doubled from $20 million to $40 million under new terms of credit agreement.
A month before that JinkoSolar officially launched operations of its solar cell and module manufacturing plant in Penang, Malaysia.
The $100 million facility was the first such overseas facility of JinkoSolar.
The facility which manufactures multicrystalline modules was expected to reach peak production capacity of 500 MW of solar cells and 450 MW of modules each year, two months into operation.
JinkoSolar stated that it was to employ Passivated Emitter Rear Cell (PERC) based high-efficiency multicrystalline technology to produce solar cells at the factory.
Ajith Kumar S