At the beginning of April 2024, the European Commission issued a notice, on March 27, made a final anti-dumping ruling on polyethylene terephthalate (Polyethylene Terephthalate/PET) originating from China, and ruled that anti-dumping duties ranging from 6.6% to 24.2% should be levied on the products in question, and the rates of duties are detailed in the attached table. The product in question is polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with viscosity greater than or equal to 78 ml/g. The EU CN (Combined Nomenclature) code for the product in question is 3907 61 00 (TARIC code 3907 61 00 10). In fact the duty rates in this release were largely reflected in the preliminary ruling announcement on November 28, 2023, i.e., 6.6% for Sanfangxiang, 10.7% for Wankai, 17.2% for CRC, and 11.1%-24.2% for the others (see the final schedule for the specific duty rates).
And since early March last year, the European Union once again launched anti-dumping investigations on China's polyester bottle chips, in fact, mainland China to the European Union countries and regions of the polyester bottle chips exports have fallen sharply. To one of the main destination markets of Italy, for example, according to China Customs data show that in January 2023 imports from China is still at 10,267 tons, while in December has fallen to 1.1 tons. At the same time, France, Belgium and other countries from China's imports have also declined significantly, to the beginning of 2024 has basically not seen in the past quantity.
However, from the point of view of the export data in the past two years, although the European Union since 2023 to carry out anti-dumping investigations of Chinese enterprises, but China's exports to the EU member states of Poland has increased year by year. It is understood that this part belongs to the volume of re-export from Poland to Ukraine. Since the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, Ukraine's eastern and northern trade routes are basically blocked, which also led to Ukraine has to rely on the EU and the Middle East to meet its domestic demand. 2021-2023 Poland's polyester bottle chips imported from China from 0.054 million tons to 81,500 tons, an increase of 1409%.
In terms of understanding from historical data, the EU carries out anti-dumping investigations on polyester bottle chips products originating from mainland China intermittently over a few years. Since the abolition of the last anti-dumping tariff in 2017, Chinese polyester bottle chips enterprises have once again increased the export volume to the EU region. Since the expansion of export volume in 2018 to 2022 to reach a record high of 440,000 tons near the 2023 anti-dumping investigation, the actual middle is also given to the four or five years of the gap period. And this is basically belongs to the global polyester bottle chip industry supply and demand pattern gradually improve the period, overseas no new device and part of the elimination, Asia, the United States and Europe to further expand the cost gap between the region, China's export enterprises advantage highlights.
In general, China's polyester bottle enterprises are gradually expanding business in other markets, the European Union imposed anti-dumping tariffs on China's polyester bottle basically has been diluted in the last year. It can be said that Europe and the United States is currently doing more to complicate the flow of trade, rather than completely blocking the export of Chinese enterprises. In addition to this, I need to remind the market is due to RPET did not have a separate tariff code, so the anti-dumping tariffs are levied with virgin PET particles; due to the European Union tariff code 39076100, although the Chinese translation is the viscosity is greater than or equal to 0.78 ml / g polyethylene terephthalate, but according to the relevant people to understand, the actual lower than 0.78 viscosity of slices are also levied anti-dumping tariffs. Although the Chinese translation is polyethylene terephthalate with viscosity greater than or equal to 0.78 ml/g, according to the source, the actual anti-dumping tariffs are also imposed on the slices with viscosity less than 0.78 ml/g, and there is no obvious loophole.
