Guangzhou China Dec. 23, 2010 – On Dec. 13th 2010, Ministry of Commerce of the People's Republic of China published a notice that Brazil Citric Acid Industry Association had applied for an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese citric acid industry, and Brazil government considered this application matched the condition to fill a case, which means that the country will probably run an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese citric acid industry. Now, many Chinese citric acid manufacturers are discussing on how to cope with this issue.
Brazil is one of the important export destinations of Chinese citric acid, which totally imported 19,642 tonnes citric acid in the first ten months this year, up 92.5% over the same period of last year. According to China Custom's data, the export price to Brazil was much lower than to the US and EU in 2010, as both of these two regions had levied anti-dumping duty on Chinese citric acid. The export price to Brazil was USD892/t averagely during the fist ten months this year, while that to the US and to EU reached USD1,584/t and USD1,042/t respectively, thus, Brazil considered the low import price from China could hurt its domestic citric acid industry, and Brazil Citric Acid Industry Association attempted to reduce Chinese citric acid competitiveness by levying anti-dumping duty, just the same as what EU and the US did before.
In 2008, EU ran an anti-dumping investigation into Chinese citric acid industry, and finally decided to levy average 6.6% ~42.7% anti-dumping duty on Chinese citric acid. However, EU and Chinese citric acid manufacturers had an agreement that if the CIF price of Chinese citric acid to EU is higher than the price promised between Chinese manufacturers and EU, there will be no anti-dumping duty. Thus, the effect of EU's anti-dumping was less than that of the US. The total citric acid import volume of EU in 2009 just decreased by 36.6% over 2008, while the US slumped by 86.6% over 2008.
The US began to run an anti-dumping and countervailing (CVD) investigation into Chinese citric acid industry in 2008, and its preliminary determination was to levy 1.41% ~ 97.72% countervailing duty and 119.41% ~ 156.87% anti-dumping duty on Chinese citric acid. And on May 29th, 2009, the US Department of Commerce announced its final determination for the countervailing duty (CVD) and anti-dumping duty investigation into Chinese citric acid and citrate salts, with CVD ranging from 3.60%～118.95% and anti-dumping duty ranging from 94.61%-156.87%. Impacted by these two duties, Chinese citric acid to the US shrank largely in 2009.
However, although the export volume to both EU and the US has reduced, Chinese total export volume still kept increasing year by year. During January and October in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010, the total export volume was 518,861 tonnes, 532,101 tonnes, 542,951 tonnes, and 590,786 tonnes respectively. That's because some other countries increased their import volume from China, such as India, Thailand, and Vietnam, which imported 38,760 tonnes, 28,276 tonnes, and 6,559 tonnes citric acid from China during January and October 2010, up 50%, 331%, and 47% separately over the same period of 2008.
Source:
Corn Product China News
CCM International,Ltd.