The EU Commission announced to extend the existing anti-dumping and countervailing duties and the Minimum Import Price (MIP) agreement on Chinese imports on December 4. Today, Trina Solar, one of the world’s leading PV company, officially announced to withdraw from the EU Price Undertaking (UT) and to supply it European customers through its overseas manufacturing facilities.
EU’s AD/CVD duties and the MIP agreement (also UT) against Chinese PV imports became regulative on December 5, 2013 and were supposed to be expired on December 7 this year. However, EU ProSun appealed for extension for review earlier this year and the appeal was accepted. The EU Commission successively exclude five Chines PV manufacturers from the UT because of certain evidences of agreement violation have been found. Companies that are not included in the MIP/UT shall pay up to 47.7% AD tariffs when exporting their products into the EU market.
In Trina Solar’s statement, Mr. Jifan Gao, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Trina Solar, said: "We believe the current iteration of the UT agreement misinterprets the rules and scope of the original UT, and adversely affects the execution of our global expansion strategy. In particular, the prohibition of manufacturing modules in overseas facilities, regardless of whether the modules will be sold to the EU or to non-EU markets is an obvious misapplication to the UT agreement.”
Trina Solar believes the current MIP does not reflect the ongoing market trends in the solar sector, particularly as average selling prices in major markets continue to decline at a faster than expected rate, with downward pressure anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future. Consequently, the Chinese companies that are party to the UT have lost their competitiveness to their non-Chinese peers in selling to EU markets.
As a result, Trina Solar decided to withdraw from the UT.
“With our recognized brand name, advanced technology and established customer base, we believe our withdrawal from the UT will allow us to better develop our business in the region through our tariff-free overseas facilities and to regain market share under a more flexible pricing strategy,” stated Gao in Trina Solar’s statement.
EnergyTrend’s data shows that Trina Solar currently have 700MW of PV cell production capacity and 500MW of PV module in Thailand. In addition, Trina Solar keeps OEM partnerships with several manufacturing facilities in other Southeast asian countries so that they can continue delivering tariff-free products to the European market.
At the end of his statement, Gao again called for the fair market competition and balanced trading environment for the good of the PV industry and the mankind.