SMR Stainless Club: European importers challenge EC cold-rolling definition in anticircumvention probes

The recent findings from the anti-circumvention probe into stainless steel cold-rolled flats have been quite relieving for EU importers, yet some EC views continue to raise concerns among them explains SMR Stainless Club.

The European Association of Non-Integrated Metal Importers & Distributors (EURANIMI) has expressed worry over the European Commission’s (EC) approach to defining cold-rolling processes during the anti-circumvention probe against imports of coldrolled coils and sheets from Taiwan, Türkiye, and Vietnam. EURANIMI fears that the EC approach could affect the reliability of determining the legal origin of imported goods.

Despite acknowledging the provisional relief from the investigation’s preliminary results, which exempted nearly all significant producers from the three mentioned countries, EURANIMI has voiced its strong disagreement with the European Commission’s decision to equalize cold-rolling operations with the assembly of parts or finishing operations.

“Such an interpretation completely ignores the enormous cost of a rolling installation and the undeniable fact that hot and cold rolling fundamentally and permanently modifies the essential dimensional, physical, mechanical, and metallurgical properties of the product,” claimed EURANIMI.

Furthermore, the association pointed out that this interpretation jeopardizes the importer’s certainty concerning the origin of any metal product that undergoes hot or cold forming or rolling. This means that the product’s origin lies not in the rolling mill that makes the tube, coil, or profile but instead in the often unknown producer of the initial slabs or hot rolled coil.

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SMR Stainless Club
24 March 2024
English