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The EU has decided to impose anti-dumping and countervailing duties (AD and CVD) on China-imported solar glass in early August. While the European Commission announced the new AD rates that double the level up to 75.4%.
EU ProSun Glass applied for launching a new phase of investigation on Chinese PV glass in November, 2014. After a nine-month investigation, the European Commission found that the price of China-imported PV glass had continued to decrease despite the previously ruled AD and CVD tariffs, which was respectively 36% and 17%. As a result, the Commission concluded that China-imported solar glass was genuinely dumped and announced the new version of AD duties on August 13.
The AD rates imposed since May, 2014 were 17.15%~42.1%, and the CVD rate was 17%, wrote PV Tech. The new CVD rate remains unchanged from the original case, yet the AD tariffs were doubled to 17%~75%. The highest AD rate 75.4% was applied to Xinyi PV Products while most other companies are given rates of around 60%.
PV Magazine reports, EU’s investigators found that the companies they investigated has merely absorbed the cost of duties into their prices. In addition, counter-claims by investigated Chinese glass makers were rejected because these companies did not cooperate with the investigation in order to support their claims. The Commission consequently concluded to increase the AD levels.
Reuters reported that EU solar glass imports represents€200 million in annual value, or roughly 0.1% of total EU imports. Furthermore, EnergyTrend’s statistic shows that there are only approximately 2GW of PV module production capacity in the Europe, meaning that China does not strongly rely on the European market. The increased AD rates could be for protecting the few glass makers in the Europe.
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