S.Korea's OCI announces solar panel expansion plan

OCI, South Korea's leading manufacturer of polysilicon used in solar panel cells, Wednesday announced plans to spend 1.88 trillion won (1.65 billion dollars) over the next two years to expand output.

The company said in a statement it would invest 1.6 trillion won to build a new plant by October 2012, and spend another 280 billion won expanding an existing plant.

OCI said the investments would expand its annual output capacity by 27,000 tonnes to the world's largest figure of 62,000 tonnes.

"The large-scale expansion is designed to support continuously increasing demand for high-purity polysilicon products," it said in the statement.