The construction of the world's largest photovoltaic film material project started on Wednesday in Lianyungang City, east China's Jiangsu Province.

Photovoltaic film material is the core raw material for the production of encapsulation film for photovoltaic module, and it is widely used in electronic information, automobile manufacturing, aerospace and other fields.

At present, over 60 percent of China's photovoltaic film materials are imported. Upon completion, the project's annual production capacity will reach one million tonnes, raising China's global market share up about 20 percentage points for high-end photovoltaic materials. 

With a total investment of about 21.6 billion yuan ($3.1 billion), the project will also construct three sets of equipment, including one for high-performance engineering plastic and another for high-end polyolefin.

Zhu Hengjun, head of the project, told China Media Group (CMG) that "the production of photovoltaic film materials faces high barriers to entry, long production expansion cycle and many restrictions on changing line of production."

"With technical breakthroughs, we have mastered a full set of independent technologies and achieved stable mass production."