Key Technology and Long-term Innovation: Zhu Gongshan’s Success Story with GCL Group in Jiangsu

“In the early years, in order to master the international advanced polysilicon technology, I went abroad for investigation, but they didn’t let us see it at all.” On the afternoon of May 20, at the Yangtze River Business Summit of the Third Jiangsu Development Conference, GCL Group Holdings Zhu Gongshan, chairman of the board of directors of the company, recalled a period of “difficult times”, which resonated with many energy industries and scientific research companies: key technologies cannot wait, and there is no “quick” shortcut to innovation, only long-term success.

At that time, Zhu Gongshan was “closed door”, but his heart became more and more determined: we not only want to make China’s own polysilicon, but also increase the production capacity to 10,000 tons. At that time, the whole country could not even independently produce 100 tons of polysilicon. Many people in the industry felt that his idea was pure idealism. However, Zhu Gongshan’s later persistence shocked the industry even more: from 2018 to 2020, for three consecutive years, GCL has invested a total of 23.7 billion yuan, with annual losses. Even under such pressure, Zhu Gongshan still insisted on R&D and investment, and he wanted to create a new energy material comparable to polysilicon.

If you don’t donate your merits, you will succeed in Yuru. Today, GCL granular silicon has won the favor of more than ten leading photovoltaic enterprise customers. The group’s planned production capacity of granular silicon has exceeded 700,000 tons, and the output has climbed from the initial 6,000 tons/month to 15,000 tons per month. . Taking the performance of GCL Technology, a subsidiary of the group, in the first quarter of 2023 as an example, the company’s net profit attributable to the parent company reached 4.09 billion yuan, an increase of 35% over the same period in 2022. The growth momentum is coming from the continuous increase in the market share of “granular silicon”.

“In 2025, our group’s manufacturing sales will strive to reach 250 billion yuan.” Zhu Gongshan said that the group has never stopped the pace of research and development, and has actively deployed research and development institutions in the United States, Japan and other places, with more than 300 domestic and foreign research and development personnel. In the future, the group will also fully focus on the integration of computing power and electricity, and open up a new track for the construction of domestic energy computing industry innovation clusters.

Not long ago, the People’s Government of Xiangcheng District, Suzhou City and GCL Group signed a strategic cooperation framework agreement to jointly launch the first energy computing power center in China. Zhu Gongshan has started a new journey in his mind: “Through the energy computing power center, the AI ​​large model is expected to empower the global energy business scenarios including energy supplementary infrastructure, dig deep into the flexibility of the power load side, and explore the new development of energy storage integration. Scenarios, improve the active support capability of new energy, increase the overall efficiency of the system by more than 35%, and let the new power system have a ‘number’ in mind.”

Wang Mengran, reporter of Xinhua Daily Junction