TAIPEI, TAIWAN: Even as it awaits a possible investment from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC), solar cell maker E-Ton Solar Tech is looking at making a turnaround in its business.

E-Ton Solar president Allen Guo has been quoted by Digitimes as saying that the company, which had clocked a net loss of around US$22.3 million during the first half of 2009, would look at returning to profitability in the third quarter.

"E-Ton has reached full utilization of production capacity and international solar cell prices have rebounded significantly and has also orders on hand with shipments scheduled for November 2009", he said.

As earlier reported, the solar cell maker had already shipped 30MWp and 50MWp of solar cells in the first and second quarter of 2009 respectively.

The company is now lining up exports of 60MWp for the third quarter. The company has said that, of the revenues in the third quarter, about 30 per cent would come in from these China-based solar cell makers who outsourcing production to E-Ton.

This, because, Chinese companies see capacity crunch at their own facilities and also lack of products to meet the energy conversion rates specified by their clients. As for the moment, E-Ton boasts of an annual capacity of 320 MWp consisting of 90 per cent for polycrystalline silicon solar cells and 10 per cent for monocrystalline silicon cells.