Like many of its Chinese peers such as JA Solar or Yingli Green Energy, Trina reported a tremendous upswing in sales during the third quarter -- due partly to the nightmarish nature of the first half of the year, and partly to the bull solar market currently rippling across Germany, spurred by looming cuts to its feed-in tariff.

Trina shipped 123 megawatts (MW) of modules during the third quarter, besting its prior guidance. In comparison, it shipped 64MW in the second quarter of 2009, and 66.4MW during the third quarter of 2008.

Third-quarter revenues were dragged down 14.1% year-on-year to $249.7m by the depressed price of solar modules. But Trina managed to bag its highest-ever quarterly net profit of $71.1m by taking advantage of the even more ruthlessly depressed price of polysilicon.

Trina chief executive Jifan Gao says he expects even stronger demand for its solar panels in the fourth quarter of the year than in the third. Gao adds that after a year of thick economic fog, he is finally experiencing “increasing visibility” into the industry’s near-term future.

During the third quarter Trina signed a five-year extension to its existing eight-year polysilicon supply contract with Jiangsu Zhongneng, a subsidiary of GCL-Poly. The deal will now run through 2021, and cover enough polysilicon and wafers to produce 8.5 gigawatts of solar modules.

Trina places a heavy emphasis on the importance of its diverse quiver of short-, medium- and long-term polysilicon contracts. The company says most of its long-term contracts, including the one with GCL-Poly, contain price-adjustment clauses to keep them tightly aligned with the spot price of polysilicon.