MOSCOW (MRC) -- The European Commission (EU) has begun anti-dumping investigations on purified terephthalic acid (PTA) imports from Korea, as per GV.
Upon receiving complaints by the PTA industry within the EU on 20 June, the commission set out to look into the matter from 3 August.
EU companies claimed that they were damaged by Korean-originated terephthalic acid imports sold at prices below cost. The time period for the investigation is for one year between 1 July 2015 and 30 June 2016 and the item under examination is the terephthalic acid with purity over 99.5 percent.
The world's PTA market is suffering from a supply glut due to a rapid rise in the capacity in countries like China. Major Korean PTA suppliers such as Hanhwa General Chemical and Lotte Chemical have, to little avail, tried to diversify their sales channels after Chinese rivals increased their output.
We remind that, as MRC wrote previously, China has continue anti-dumping duties on a commodity chemical imported from the Republic of Korea (ROK) and Thailand. The tariffs on PTA became effective for another five years on Thursday (11 Aug 2016), with rates ranging from 2 percent to 20.1 percent, the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said Wednesday (10 Aug 2016) in a notice posted on its website. The ruling was made after official surveys showed that damage to the domestic industry would reoccur if the tariffs were terminated, the notice said. The ministry started imposing anti-dumping duties on the industrial organic compound in 2010.
MRC