A private enterprise has become a leader in the photovoltaic industry for five years, thanks to the idea of ​​“destructive exploitation” by its leaders, and the unique background of deep links with Poly and subsequent escort by CIC.

Shortly before the Spring Festival in 2012, Zhu Gongshan visited the Philippines, Vietnam and other countries and negotiated several energy projects. The “photovoltaic building” apparently tried to deploy Southeast Asia.

The 54-year-old Zhu Gongshan is a very low-key Chinese private entrepreneur and he almost never accepts media interviews. He used to be the “private electric king” in China and built more than 20 power stations in the gap between the five major power groups. He entered the photovoltaic industry only in 2006, but he has developed into a global polysilicon and wafer industry in just 5 years. The boss, with a net worth of 16 billion yuan, became Hurun New Energy's richest man in 2011.

Zhu Gongshan now holds the GCL-Poly's market value of more than 40 billion Hong Kong dollars (approximately 33 billion yuan ***) ranked first in the world's new energy companies. A few years ago the new energy giants - Suntech and Wuxi Sunvee - have already been left behind. The former even fell into bankruptcy rumors, while the latter was in a difficult winter.

GCL-Poly is closely associated with the Poly Group. Now the major shareholder is Zhu Gongshan, and the second largest shareholder is CIC (holding nearly 20%); this kind of shareholding structure makes GCL-Poly in itself a special color. .

What kind of person Zhu Gongshan is and how he controls this company?

Central enterprise partners

In the photovoltaic industry 10 years ago, Zhu Gongshan most told the outside world why his thermal power plant did not emit black smoke.

Zhu Gongshan, who was born in the electric power division, was born in the village of Donggou Town, Mianning County, northern Jiangsu Province. He is the third oldest at home. His family history was almost deified in his hometown.

Zhu Gongshan began working in Suining since 1978 and has also worked as a salesman. In the early 1990s, he started his own business. First, it registered and established GCL Group (shell company) overseas and found a foreign company in the Mainland. The first project was to build a thermal power plant in Taicang, which was established in 1996 by Taicang Xinhai Kangxin Thermal Power Co., Ltd.

This company was jointly invested by Zhu Gongshan and Hong Kong New Haikang Aviation Investment Co., Ltd. The latter's major shareholder is Poly Group’s wholly-owned subsidiary “Hong Kong Yugao Trading Co., Ltd.”, holding 65% of the shares. In other words, Zhu Gongshan’s first “goes out” to stand with the central government Poly Group and sing a big show, which is also the origin of the name of GCL-Poly.

At that time, the first thermal power plant project had been forced to suspend work because of financial problems. Fortunately, Zhu was later rescued by an “excellent person”.

Zhu Gongshan was generous in his personality. In a short period of time, he opened up a network of Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces and began to establish industrial supporting power plants in the second and third tier cities and economic development zones of the two provinces, focusing on environmental protection renewable energy power plants such as waste-to-energy and biomass. In the past ten years, more than two dozen power plants were built and they were called “private electric kings” by the workshop; he packaged power plant assets and brought GCL-Poly into the Hong Kong main board in 2007.

"Long list" bet

In 2006, Zhu Gongshan decided to enter the upper reaches of the photovoltaic industry, the highest polysilicon feedstock industry. He created 7 billion yuan to establish Jiangsu Zhongneng Silicon Technology Development Co., Ltd. (abbreviated as Jiangsu Zhongneng). At that time, domestic photovoltaic companies were intensively listed overseas. The reason Zhu Chushan differed from Wuxi Suntech and Tianwei Yingli into the upper reaches was due to the consideration of market competition, but also because he was a "large stomach king."

Zhu Gongshan dared to gamble. After Jiangsu Zhongneng put into production, it just happened that the price of polysilicon had soared. However, in the crazy moment when polysilicon was extremely tight, he decided to use polysilicon to meet the demand of the downstream customers and sign long-term strategic supply contracts.

Afterwards, Jiangsu Zhongneng did not take advantage of the spot profit of $500/kg, but chose to sign an 8-year long-term contract with a much lower profit. The contract price was 40%-50% lower than the spot price, according to After the accounts were calculated, Zhu Gongshan gave away profits of hundreds of billions of yuan.

Zhu Gongshan always believed that the signing of the “long bill” was a beautiful battle for him in the photovoltaic industry. This move made it possible for Jiangsu Zhongneng to pave the way for the expansion of production in the financial crisis. At that time, the price of polysilicon had fallen below 100 US dollars, but with these "long orders", Jiangsu Zhongneng was much better than other companies' days after the financial crisis broke out.

According to Zhu’s original assumption, Jiangsu Zhongneng will be listed on the United States or Hong Kong independently, but it will be affected by the financial crisis, pushing Jiangsu’s Zhongneng’s landing date into a push and push, eventually leading to unsuccessful listing. GCL-Poly finally acquired the entire equity of Jiangsu Zhongneng with more than 26 billion Hong Kong dollars (equivalent to 23 billion yuan) in 2009, and transformed itself into a new energy leader.

Zhu Gongshan’s efficiency and speed of playing with new energy sources are staggering: At the end of 2006, he entered the photovoltaic industry. For more than two years, he ranked third in the global polysilicon feedstock industry, and in 2011, he became the largest in the world. In 2010, he also set foot in the In the silicon field, it took less than one year to become the industry leader. Not only does it account for about 30% of the world's supply, but its cost is the lowest in the industry.

Hard to copy

In January 2011, the polysilicon market was still quite good, but by the end of March, solar cell-related quotes all the way down, due to the outbreak of the European debt crisis, many European countries to cancel subsidies for alternative energy, polysilicon prices have plummeted, and even dropped to Unprecedented below $40.

In order to appease the downstream manufacturers, Zhu Gongshan led the team to negotiate with customers several times. The approach taken was to reduce the price, extend the contract, and reduce the losses caused by the drop in the spot price of silicon materials on the premise of achieving a constant total contract value. Zhu Gongshan caught the hearts of downstream companies.

But they sometimes don’t buy it. Shuhua, the president of GCL-Poly, has been sharply criticized in Taiwan: “The solar industry collapses. Do you think that GCL-Poly is the initiator?”

The questioner is Lin Weishan, chairman of Taiwan Datong Group. The cause is the aggressive low-cost strategy of GCL-Poly. At the time, Shu Hua was at the Taiwan International Solar Photonics Co., Ltd. to exaggerate the "generousness" of GCL-Poly: "The GCL approach does not require customers to speak. We take the initiative to discuss with them related issues, rather than waiting for him to speak."

In contrast to Zhu Gongshan’s slightly fat and calm style, Shu Hua is thin and lean. He still said on stage smiling that GCL’s polysilicon production costs will drop to US$20/kg by the end of 2011. He kicked the ball back: "What you should ask is why other companies can't do it?"

Since it was born, there was a shareholder of the central SOE Poly Group. GCL-Poly was apparently difficult to duplicate, but even more eye-catching was November 2009, China’s sovereign wealth ** – China Investment Corporation’s HK$5.5 billion share in GSP. Xin, who obtained 20% of the equity, became the second largest shareholder of GCL-Poly.

The joining of CIC not only improved the financial status of GCL-Poly and reduced its liabilities, but also gave Zhu Gongshan the opportunity to open up solar power plants. In 2010, GCL-Poly was able to enter two photovoltaic projects in the United States. Both of these projects will be entirely provided by GCL-Poly's modules for wafer production.

Not only that, in the first half of 2010, GCL-Poly received a credit of RMB10 billion from the Bank of China (3.06, 0.02, 0.66%). With sufficient funds, GCL-Poly could quickly expand its production capacity.

An internal employee of GCL-Poly and the Southern Weekend reporter chatted about the expansion model of GCL-Poly. “The boss dared to bet on treasure” and “having a background” were two points that he was proud of: “What is happening in Beijing is Paul Lee. " Zhu Gongshan entered the Southeast Asian market is also led by Poly. In the U.S. market, CIC has “covered” and GCL-Poly has established a global silicon material R&D center in Washington, USA. This institution mainly absorbs and transforms overseas technology to achieve its own technological breakthrough. "We are building solar power plants in the United States. It's all about learning technology." The above-mentioned employees said, "Of course, there is no Poly and CIC. These things cannot be done."

Zhu Gongshan believes that the most important factor in the success of a company is the opportunity and scale. He enjoys cooperation with the central SOEs, saying that he “flows the blood of the central SOEs”. He likes the “premia of the country.” Many of his executives are from state-owned enterprises or large state-owned enterprises. His partners in recent years include CLP, China Guangdong Nuclear Power, and China Merchants. The employees said that Zhu Gongshan “has an office wherever he goes”.

Behind the noise

Three or four years ago, Zhu Gongshan was also referred to by the media as a “mysterious figure.” With the growing scale of GCL-Poly, the outside world is deeply curious about this complex “big brother”. The "Wall Street Journal" once published the article "China's "State Capitalism Causes Western Eyebrows", which refers to China's use of state capital to prop up Zhu Gongshan, avoiding cumbersome approval processes, and can start production within 15 months, in just a few years. Create one of the world's largest photovoltaic companies.

However, no matter how speculated the outside world, the expansion of GCL-Poly is still continuing. On September 16, 2011, Zhu Gongshan held hands with Terry Gou, and GCL-Poly and Foxconn collaborated to build polysilicon at their hometowns Yancheng, Jiangsu and Datong, Shanxi respectively. Vertically integrated industrial chain of batteries, components and downstream photovoltaic power plants. Zhu Gongshan attached great importance to this project and sent a team of 40 to 50 people. But it wasn't long before news of Gou's failure to inject capital.

The Southern Weekend reporter visited the construction site of the photovoltaic power station located in Dupu Village, Dangliu Village, Datong City, Shanxi Province before the Spring Festival. The project outline clearly states that the total size of Datong Xiehe Photovoltaic Power Project is 500 MW, and the current construction scale is 20 MW. Covers an area of ​​600 acres. The project started on September 16, 2011. It is scheduled to be completed on December 26, 2011 and all of it will be connected to the grid for power generation.

However, in this overgrown land, there is only a two-story open space, and there is no one other than the old man in a construction site in the town of Jampau. Sparsely struck dozens of cement piles on the ground. The foundation stones are still there, and there are scattered crumbs in the pits, indicating that the site has been bustling.

Shu Hua's explanation for the failure to complete the project on schedule was: "The preliminary examination and approval was rather troublesome. After the foundation stone was laid, it caught up with the frozen earth period." For Guo Tingming's injection of capital, he asked: "At least, Terry Gou said nothing."