(Yicai Global) Dec. 5 -- Shares in Wuxi Shangji Automation plummeted as much as 8.3 percent today after the Chinese solar wafer giant said that a fire recently broke out at the construction site of its upcoming mega photovoltaic industrial park, killing five people and injuring two.

Shangji’s share price [SHA:603185] closed down 2.8 percent at CNY115.39 (USD16.56) today. Earlier in the day it sank to CNY108.88.

A fire broke out at a construction site in the economic and technological development zone of Xuzhou, eastern Jiangsu province, leaving five people dead and two slightly injured, Xuzhou Emergency Management Bureau said on Dec. 3.

The facility is being built by a third-party and has not been handed over to Shangji yet, the Wuxi, Jiangsu province-based firm said yesterday. The fire won’t affect Shangji’s operations as the Xuzhou project, which is run by subsidiary Hongyuan New Material, is still a long way off to being completed, it added.

The fire did not damage the solar cell production lines and the building timetable will not be greatly affected, it added. The firm will continue to rely on its plant in Baotou, northern Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region to meet existing orders.

Shangji said in August that it will build a CNY15 billion (USD2.2 billion) mega factory with an annual output of 25 gigawatts of monocrystalline silicon wafers and 24GW of high-efficiency crystalline silicon cells. Construction will take place in three phases and the plant should be ready by 2025.

Shangji has been rapidly expanding capacity of solar wafers, a key component used in PV cells, and an important source of profit for the firm. Shangji’s profit doubled in the first three quarters from the same period last year to CNY2.8 billion (USD402.4 million), while revenue more than doubled to CNY17.5 billion (USD2.5 billion), according to its latest financial report.

Editor: Kim Taylor