The European Commission has announced that it has initiated an antidumping duty (AD) investigation against certain cold rolled flat steel products (CRF) from India, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam.
The investigation was launched upon the complaint made by EUROFER, alleging that imports of the given products originating in India, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey and Vietnam are being dumped, causing injury to the EU steel industry. The investigation will cover the period between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025. The examination of trends relevant for the assessment of injury will cover the period from January 1, 2022, to the end of the investigation period.
Among the countries, involved in the investigation, only India currently has a separate import quota for CRC in the EU amounting to 165,051 mt per quarter, while the others are selling to Europe using the “others quota” with a 13 percent cap. “With this cap, countries from the others quota have their own individual quantity with around a 43,000 mt quarter base. The amount was already limited with the cap and affected our CR exports. Now with this dumping [case], one company will get better values and most probably will have an advantage on CR exports,” a Turkish source told SteelOrbis. In addition, several re-rollers in Turkey have commented that cold rolled full hard is also exported to the EU in the framework of the same volume, and so the quota is already being used up fairly rapidly.
The provisional measures are expected to be announced within seven months. “Basically, by June 2026, it seems that the EU is trying to come up with market protections, as an alternative to the quota system, and so we have CBAM and new import trade cases,” a market source mentioned.
The products subject to antidumping duty investigation currently fall under Customs Tariff Statistics Position Numbers ex 7209 15 00, 7209 16 90, 7209 17 90, 7209 18 91, ex 7209 18 99, ex 7209 25 00, 7209 26 90, 7209 27 90, 7209 28 90, 7211 23 30, ex 7211 23 80, ex 7211 29 00, 7225 50 80, and 7226 92 00.
In the January-September period this year, the EU imported 242,551 mt of CRC from Taiwan, 241,957 mt from India, 157,286 mt from Vietnam, 135,334 mt from Turkey and 92,547 mt from Japan. In 2024, the EU imported 543,678 mt of CRC from Taiwan, 420,312 mt from India, 351,541 mt from Turkey, 236,728 mt from Japan and 171,773 mt from Vietnam.