Jiangsu SOPO Chemical has announced a new factory which will make Ethyl Vinyl Acetate (EVA) encapsulant for solar modules, to be built in Zhenjiang New District, Shaoguan, Guangdong province – inland from Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The first phase will have a 330,000 ton production capacity of vinyl acetate monomer (VAM), and the second phase will have a 300,000 ton production capacity of ethyl vinyl acetate (EVA) using the tubular process. With about 7 tons used per MW, we estimate that this facility by itself will serve 43 GW of solar module production, which would make encapsulant responsible for some 10% of the investment cost of a fully-verticalized solar supply chain – if we include the vinyl acetate capacity. The…