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The European Commission has imposed definitive anti-dumping duties on imports of heavy plate from China. The duties are in the range 65.1-73.7% according to company [see table]. In a notice published in its Official Journal on Tuesday, the Commission said these were the levels of duty needed to eliminate the injury that the imports caused to EU plate producers.
Its investigation found dumping margins of up to 127.6% in the case. Provisional duties on the imports have been in place since October 2016 and these will now be definitively collected.
But the Commission decided not to apply the duties retroactively because the tonnage imported from China has fallen sharply since the provisional duties were imposed. As Platts has reported, EU imports of plate from China fell by close to 40% in 2016 compared with 2015, reaching 841,683 metric tons.
Three Chinese plate exporters told Platts they stopped shipping to the EU when provisional AD duties were imposed last year. They believed the duties were high enough to block most Chinese plate products from the EU market.
Covered by the duties are flat products of alloy and non-alloy steel (excluding stainless, silicon electrical steel, tool steel and high-speed steel) hot rolled, not clad, plated or coated, not in coils, over 10mm thick and 600mm wide, or 4.75-10mm thick and over 2,050mm wide.
Henry Cooke and Jing Zhang, SBB Daily Briefing