Trina Solar has started operations at its new manufacturing facility in Thailand.

Situated in Rayong, the plant started production using the company’s Honey assembly line method.

The facility’s annualized production capacity for modules is 500MW and the company plans to further increase it to 600MW based on overseas market demand.

Annualized production capacity for cells is 700MW.

Trina Solar has also signed a $143m syndicated financing facilities agreement with a consortium of banks led by the Siam Commercial Bank Public Company Limited (SCB).

The loan will be used to finance capital expenditure of the new manufacturing facility. The loan agreement for a total of $100m with SCB and China Minsheng Banking matures in June 2020.

Another $43m has been granted by SCB as line of credit. This amount will be used as working capital.

Trina Solar chairman and CEO Jifan Gao said: "The investment in Thailand fits our strategy of prudent capacity expansion in select overseas markets to deliver industry leading products to customers in the US and Europe in particular as we strive to increase the profitability of the company."

"The US$143 million in financing agreement in support of our Thai operations is a great vote of confidence from both SCB and CMBC in our brand and our overseas expansion strategy. We look forward to cooperating further with these two first tier banks in our other strategic initiatives."