Third product category exhausts UK safeguard quota

Large welded tubes are the third product category to exhaust their UK tariff rate quotas for the first quarter, after hollow sections from Turkey and other countries, UK steel distributors’ association NASS informs Kallanish.

No other quota categories are “critical”, although Tin Mill Products (6) from China is the nearest quota to become so. There is 667 tonnes remaining of this quota from the original 3,842t, according to the HMRC database.

In the EU, meanwhile, one month since new tariff-free quotas became available, long and tubular products have registered the largest uptake (see Kallanish passim).

As for Northern Ireland, HMRC continues to discuss with the European Commission the application of EU safeguards and the increase in quotas for UK exports into the EU single market to account for direct Great Britain to Northern Ireland movement.