Imports of extruded aluminium into the United Kingdom may get significantly more expensive for suppliers in the People’s Republic of China in the very near term, as British trade officials are looking into complaints by domestic aluminium extrusion producers that Chinese exporters are unfairly undercutting their business.
The UK’s Trade Remedies Authority said on Friday that it has found that exporters from the Middle Kingdom have been dumping underpriced aluminium extrusions into British ports for some time. In an interim report issued that day, the TRA recommended import duties of up to 29 percent as a result.
“The TRA determined that there is already damage to the UK industry, having found clear evidence of price undercutting, indicating that UK businesses are struggling to compete with the dumped imports.”
The TRA went on to specify interim measures it will carry out relating to Chinese aluminium extrusion exporters. Among them will be a required bank guarantee from those exporters beginning on Saturday.
The TRA report called out three specific exporters, namely Press Metal International Group (part of Press Metal of Malaysia), Shandong Nanshan, and Haomei Group, and recommended additional import duties of between 7.3 percent and 29.1 percent. Other categories of import duties were established for firms that did and did not cooperate with the investigation.
This aluminium extrusions investigation is TRA’s first investigation arising from complaints of unfair trade practices by British companies, it noted in the report. The organization was established upon the UK’s exit from the European Union in 2020.
Chinese aluminium extrusion exporters have been the focus of numerous investigations by trade authorities in Europe and abroad in recent years. Most investigations have found that a wide range of both upstream and downstream aluminium companies are the recipients of state subsidies, enabling them to undercut domestic producers in many jurisdictions.