As report goes, Taiwan’s biggest manufacturer of silicon ingots, Sino-American Silicon Products Inc., plans to buy furnaces that GT Solar will build to grow sapphire ingots to promote sales related to LED manufacturing.

At a recent institutional-investor conference, executives from Sino-American disclosed the company will rise the output current output 60,000 wafers up to 180,000 wafers a month by the end of 2011,  fueling speculations that the company would buy GT Solar`s equipment.

Despite Sino-American Silicon is eager for its output of sapphire ingots, which now account for only 1-2% of its sales, the production methodology it is using now is out of efficient.

For GT Solar, the company plans to roll out its first sapphire-ingot furnaces in April 2011, according to Scott Kroeger, vice president of GT Solar.

GT Solar`s acquisition of sapphire maker Crystal Systems in July 2010 is associated with its later pledge to enter into manufacturing of sapphire equipment.

The company will design its sapphire equipment around the processing technology called heat exchange method, which is recognized to be much more efficient than the traditional Kyropoulos and Czochralski methods.