EU Announces MIP on HRC Imports; Eurofer Not Pleased with the Levels Indicated

The European Commission (EC) is determined to implement MIP on HRC exported from Russia,Ukraine Brazil and Iran. Exporters from these countries are required to pay anti dumping duties in the range of 5.3-33% if they sell HRC below Minimum Import Price of Euro 472/MT which is equivalent to USD 550/MT on CIF EU. However Serbia has been excluded from this owing to low import volumes.

The EC will announce final duties on 6 Oct’17.

Eurofer unhappy with decided MIP level-On the other side Eurofer ( European steel association) has showed its disagreement against MIP level as it will not be enough to help the domestic steelmakers against dumped imports from four countries.

Market participants highlighted some of the reasons why proposed MIP is not suitable according to market conditions which are mentioned as follows:

1. Uniform MIP on HRC simply will not stop dumping
Uniform level of prices have been decided on wide range of HRC products. High added value products are still likely to be threatened by cheaper imports.The price difference between commodity and higher grades could easily be more than €100( USD 117)/MT.

2. Short term impact expected
Market participants mentioned that introduction of MIP policy is not suitable in terms of volumes and prices in European HRC market.However the effective import price should be below MIP and on the other side domestic HRC price in Europe market is heard around Euro 500 (USD 583) which is more preferable compared to cheaper HRC imports from other countries.

3.Unable to protect the European steelmakers in domestic market-
Trade sources mentioned that current MIP policy is unable to protect the domestic European market or will block the imports on rising exchange rates and production cost.Since the policy is not formulated according to changing market conditions.

4.Does not indicate cost fluctuations-
New MIP policy does not reflect the cost fluctuations in raw material prices when the production cost moves up or down.However their is no specific formula to calculate MIP.It is just the figure mentioned in the documents which will make a small difference in the European market.

Besides above mentioned reasons,overseas buyers and Russian steelmakers continue to import HRC in Europe after imposition of proposed MIP by the European commission.

~Sourced