EU fixes import duties for electrical steel

The European Union plans to impose anti-dumping duties on electrical steel imports from Russia, China, South Korea, Japan and the United States to protect European steelmakers from cheap imports entering the EU market.

This decision was taken following the consideration of a complaint filed by European steel producers with the Eurofer association in June 2014. The European Commission has set tariffs on textured flat products for electrical steel (GOES) at up to 21.6 percent for Russian imports and up to 35.9 percent for Japanese GOES imports. The duties will also cover imports from China at 28.7 percent, South Korea 22.8 percent and the United States of America 22 percent. Responsibilities are preliminary, pending the final results of the investigation in November. As a rule, such duties are introduced for five years.



GOES is considered a high-tech product used for the production of transformer cores, and electrical steels are produced by only 16 manufacturers in the world. The market share of dumped imports in the EU has risen to 47 percent since 2012 at around € 150 million, with most of it coming from Japan and Russia. Eurofer says the dumped imports are hurting EU industries as the average price of electrical steel fell by about 30 percent between 2011 and 2014. As a result, import prices are lower than production costs, resulting in significant losses for EU producers.

The duties will be imposed on the imports of Chinese companies Baosteel and Wuhan Iron and Steel Corp, South Korean manufacturer Posco, US company AK Steel and Russian NLMK. Japan's manufacturers JFE Steel Corp, Nippon Steel and Sumitomo Metal Corp and others will also face taxes on GOES imports into the EU.