(Yicai Global) July 7 -- Shares of Huadong Heavy Machinery got a momentary boost after the Chinese crane manufacturer said it will invest CNY6 billion (USD828.8 million) to build its second solar cell plant.

Huadong [SHE:002685] moved up over 6 percent intraday but closed flat at CNY3.94 (US 50 cents).

The port machinery firm will set up a new factory in Bozhou in Anhui province to have an annual capacity of 10 gigawatts of N-type solar cells with higher efficiency, the Wuxi-based firm said in a statement yesterday, citing an investment contract penned with an industrial park.

The emergence of N-type cells, which are more efficient than conventional P-type cells, grants newcomers such as Huadong a good chance to stand up to the PV industry's established players.

This is Huadong's second photovoltaics project as the firm said in late March that it will build a solar cell plant in Jiangsu province with a similar capacity. Huadong started making moves to enter the PV industry after two major shareholders transferred a combined 8.5 percent stake in it to a private equity fund with a background in the new energy industry in March.

The Bozhou government is expected to finish constructing workshops for the new plant in five months. Huadong will complete installing and debugging production equipment in two months after that. Once ready, the plant should reach full capacity in two years.

After achieving the designed capacity, the facility is expected to sell at least CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion) of solar panel parts each year. It should pay no less than CNY200 million (USD27.6 million) in taxes to the local government per year and employ at least 1,000 workers. 

Editor: Emmi Laine