Three Years of Oblivion for EU’s STS Ended

      The term for the anti-dumping duty over EU supplies of nickel-bearing stainless steel has expired. To remind, on February 17th, 2007 the Russian Government had adopted an enactment #95 through which an anti-dumping duty in the amount of 840 Euro per ton had been imposed on imports of nickel-bearing stainless steel from the EU for the term of three years. On February 20th, 2007 the decree had been officially released and a month later the duty had been put in effect. Eventually, as of March 20th, 2010 the duty has expired.

      The appropriateness of the imposed duty had been called in question ever since the imposition, considering the fact that some certain questionable issues in the case have now migrated to a new anti-dumping investigation against imports from South-East Asia and some other countries. But let us get back to the initial point.

      In 2006 about 90% of stainless steel supplies were imported to Russia from EU countries (54,500 tons). In 2007 this index lowered by 12%. As experts predicted, after the imposition of the anti-dumping duty, the major tonnage of imports of the stainless steel products in question started to be sourcing from South-East Asia, Brasil and South Africa (SAR). And the new overseas suppliers managed to perfectly satisfy the strongly affected demand in stainless steel on the Russian market.

      How did the Russian producers (who had been the initiators of the anti-dumping investigation again the EU) manage to do? In the period from 2006 till 2009, Russian output of flat-rolled stainless steel slumped from 52.84 thousand tons to 44.01, while exports fell from 7.47 thousand tons to only 2.89. As before, the Russian market was lacking Russian-made stainless steel with high finish 2В and ВА; the locally produced product assortment and grade mix did not enhance either. Against this background, the allegations by Russian producer Mechel about a project of increaing stainless steel output up to 300,000 tons by 2011, should be reckoned as ungrounded with a mere goal of self-advertising.

      The only deed fulfilled by Russian producers was the initiation of an anti-dumping investigation #2, now against imports of nickel-bearing stainless steel from Brasil, South Africa, South Korea, China and Taiwan. The investigation started on March 25th, 2009 and, according to the Russian legislation, must have been over by March 25th, 2010.

      There is no making sense of restricting supplies from the above-mentioned countries while at the same time letting in EU countries. And there is no secret that the problem of the so-called dumping consists in the deliberate depreciation of the customs value of imported stainless steel at Russia’s border. If the initiators would really want to prove dumping on the part of the overseas producers, the only thing they had to do is to compare export price declarations at foreign customs with import price declaration at the Russian border. However, this was not done and that proved that the initiators were seeking quite different goals. The Russian ministry of industry and trade still continues the anti-dumping investigation #2 which results are expected to be announced shortly.

Now European producers get a opportunity of reactivating their full-fledged stainless business on the Russian market without fearing of a repeated anti-dumping investigation.

Spetsstal Association invites you to attend the International Conference ‘Stainless Steel in the Oil & Gas Industry’ that will be held on the 22nd June 2010 in Moscow, in the Radisson SAS Slavyanskaya Hotel during the work of Russia’s leading oil and gas industry exhibition NEFTEGAZ 2010. Early-bird registration is available before April 22nd, 2010. See more details...