Waaree doubles Texas solar capacity as India's manufacturers build abroad

The lines started up on 29 October, pv magazine reported on 3 November. Each line adds 800 MW of annual module capacity, taking the Brookshire site to 3.2 GW. Waaree Energies' board approved the expansion in April 2025.

That is the newest concrete step in a pattern worth watching. Indian manufacturers are not only scaling at home. They are building factories in the markets they sell into. Waaree's Arizona plant is being expanded from 1 GW to 1.6 GW. The company expects that to bring total US module capacity to 4.8 GW in fiscal 2027, the Indian year running from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2027. Waaree's global module order book exceeds 25 GW.

The numbers behind the push are in the company's own disclosure. Revenue from Waaree's US manufacturing operations rose to INR 13 billion ($146 million) in the second quarter of fiscal 2027, up from INR 7.32 billion a year earlier. The US domestic business accounted for 43.8% of the company's INR 592 billion order book, up from roughly 36% at the end of the preceding quarter. Consolidated revenue from operations rose 23.9% to INR 75.18 billion in the same quarter.

Waaree is explicit about the reason. The company said the expansion comes amid changes in US trade policy, including measures under Section 232. Those measures are affecting the economics of imported solar modules.

"Shifting trade policy has strengthened the case for local manufacturing, and that is exactly where we have invested," said Sunil Rathi, director of Waaree Group. "With Brookshire now at 3.2 GW and Arizona expanding, we are serving American customers from American factories, and our US order book continues to grow every quarter."

Upstream, the company plans to raise solar cell capacity in India from 5.4 GW to 15.4 GW in fiscal 2027. It also plans to commission a 10 GW ingot and wafer facility in fiscal 2028, pv magazine reported.

A second Indian factory, this time in Indonesia

The same day, pv magazine carried a second expansion. Chinese cell maker Yingfa Ruineng unveiled a 7.5 GW plant in Indonesia producing n-type TOPCon cells. It is the company's first overseas base, alongside three in China. The four together have a combined effective capacity of 51.5 GW, including 45.5 GW of n-type TOPCon, according to figures the company released.

The facility is meant as a regional supply hub for Southeast Asia and the Middle East. It will also support Indonesia's 100 GW solar programme. Yingfa Ruineng ranked second for global solar cell shipments in the first half of 2026, behind only Tongwei, according to the research firm InfoLink.

Read together, the two stories describe the same move from opposite directions. Capacity is being placed behind trade walls rather than concentrated where labour and cells are cheapest.

Why policy keeps pushing factories across borders

The Diplomat published research on 30 October that explains the constraint Indian planners face. The research drew on 50 interviews with executives, policymakers and industry experts in 2025 for the East Asian Institute at the National University of Singapore. It found that few executives described China+1 as leaving China at all. Most described a portfolio: keep China's scale, add India as a second site.

"China's strength is its mature local supply chain, which doesn't exist yet in Southeast Asia or India," one executive told the researchers. Smartphone assembly and exports have grown fast in India, the piece notes. But many components, machines and materials still arrive from China. Making more in India can mean buying more from Chinese suppliers in the short term.

The policy backdrop is restrictive. Press Note 3, introduced in April 2020, made investment from countries sharing a land border with India subject to government approval. Chinese equity investment into India fell from about $229 million in 2018-19, The Diplomat reported. New Delhi cleared a Dixon Technologies and Vivo smartphone joint venture on 8 July, 51% to 49%. That came nearly 19 months after it was first announced in December 2024.

The talent and demand side

Other parts of the stack are moving too. India launched the NVS-03 navigation satellite on a GSLV Mark II rocket on 30 October, Space.com reported. It is the third next-generation spacecraft for its NavIC constellation.

On the demand side, Light Reading reported on 29 October that AI traffic growth could strain India's networks. Telcos face a monetisation challenge. Separately, the South China Morning Post reported on 30 October that industry leaders at a Shanghai science forum expect AI to reshape chip design itself. Chen Yunji, co-founder of Cambricon Technologies, predicted that AI models would improve AI models and AI chips would improve AI chips within a decade, the SCMP reported.

None of this settles whether Indian manufacturing policy is working. Waaree's US numbers suggest tariff-driven localisation pays. The Diplomat's interviews suggest the supply chain underneath is still Chinese. Both can be true at once, and for now they are.