Shares of Akcome New Energy Technology advanced after the Chinese solar module maker said it plans to build a new heterojunction solar battery plant to meet the surging demand.

Akcome [SHE: 002610] closed 2 percent up at CNY2.0 (29 US cents) in Shenzhen today, after earlier gaining as much as 4.9 percent.

The new plant, which will have an annual production capacity of 4.6 gigawatt-hours of high-efficiency PV batteries using HJT and fixed asset investment of CNY2.1 billion (USD295.3 million), will be built in Akcome’s production base in Ganzhou, China’s southeastern Jiangxi province, the Zhangjiagang-based company announced late yesterday.

The project will include six production lines, which will be built one by one according to Akcome’s orders in hand, with the first one expected to begin installation next month, Akcome noted, without revealing the construction schedule of each production line.

Akcome’s high-efficiency solar batteries using HJT are in high demand, even though the PV industry is facing an oversupply glut, the firm pointed out, adding that it has 2.95 GW of such batteries orders at hand.

Akcome has four bases to produce solar batteries and modules. It has an annual solar module capacity of 10.4 GW and a yearly battery capacity of 4 GW, of which 3.2 GW is for HTJ batteries and 0.8 GW for conventional batteries using passivation emitter rear contact technology, the company said.