The European Commission said in a statement Nov. 18 that it has approved definitive safeguard measures on imports of certain ferroalloys into the EU, including from Norway and Iceland, but will conduct trimonthly consultations with the Nordic countries, while reviewing the impact of the measure that will be in place for a period of three years, expiring on Nov. 17 2028.
The Commission said it has taken an important step to protect the EU’s ferroalloy industry, which employs 1,800 people, by introducing country-specific tariff rate quotas, or TRQs, that are meant to reduce the EU’s duty-free imports of ferro-manganese, ferro-silicon, ferro-silico-manganese, and ferro-silico-magnesium to 75% of their former volumes.
Between 2022 and 2024, the EU imported an average of a little under 1.4 million metric tons/year of the four ferroalloys, with ferromanganese, ferrosilicon, and ferrosilicomanganese comprising 28%, 34%, and 37% of the tonnage, respectively. Norway, India, and Iceland provided 535,000 mt, 273,000 mt, and 71,000 mt, and combined accounted for 65% of the total volume. The bulk of the remaining imports came from South Africa, Malaysia, Zambia, and Kazakhstan.
For the first 12-month period that the safeguard would be in effect, the top three suppliers — Norway, India, and Iceland — have been allocated TRQs of approximately 401,410 mt, 197,030 mt, and 53,060 mt, respectively; the duty-free allowances for other suppliers represent cuts of the same proportion, according to the Commission’s notification.
Imports exceeding the quota volumes may enter the EU if their price exceeds the price thresholds, established at Eur1,316/mt for ferro-manganese, Eur2,408/mt for ferro-silicon, Eur1,392/mt for ferro-silico-manganese, and Eur3,647/mt for ferro-silico-magnesium. Lower-priced out-of-quota imports become subject to the duty equivalent to the difference between the net free-at-Union-frontier price and the thresholds.
The safeguard measure should be sufficient for EU ferroalloy producers to regain their home market share, which exceeded 30% four years ago, Marco Levi, CEO of Ferroglobe and President of Euroalliages, the European association of ferro-alloys and silicon producers, told Platts, part of S&P Global Commodity Insights, in a recent interview.
The decision to impose TRQs, along with the minimal prices, follows a safeguard investigation initiated in December 2024, which concluded that an influx of these ferroalloy imports into the EU is causing injury to the local industry. Between 2019 and 2024, imports increased by 17%, resulting in a fall in the market share of EU producers from 38% to 24%.
Ferroalloys are essential for producing steel, enhancing its strength, hardness, and corrosion resistance, and are crucial in the construction, automotive, aerospace, and military industries, and so the safeguard measure aims to strengthen the resilience of the wider European supply chain, according to the Commission.
