Certain EU customs authorities have recently not allowed some Vietnamese hot-dipped galvanised (HDG) coils to custom-clear after the seller only provided a declaration of the origin of the material used in manufacturing, rather than a certificate.
It appears the declaration, supplied by mills, has been sufficient in the past for most authorities — Vietnamese mills have been providing certification for the origin of the material, issued by Vietnamese authorities, which says "This certificate is not a certificate of origin".
Market participants suggest some customs authorities in the EU are no longer accepting this, and instead require a third-party certificate, confirming the origin.
There have been rumours among market participants for years about potential circumvention of anti-dumping duties, and more recently, safeguard measures, through Vietnam, mostly by re-rolling Chinese or other dumped hot-rolled coils into HDG. There have been reports in the past also of Chinese HDG being exported as Vietnamese.
The rejected material in this instance was instead moved to a different EU port and cleared through different customs authorities, which were still willing to accept the Vietnamese documents.
European steelmakers have been lobbying the EU hard more recently to crack down on Vietnamese imports of HDG, which have surged this year, as Vietnam has been the only safeguard measure-free origin. The European Commission is expected to remove Vietnam from its developing list countries during its next review of the safeguard quotas, which will likely occur before the new quota period begins in July 2022.
"The Commission will carry out a functioning review investigation of the measure in the first half of 2022. In this review, among other issues, the Commission will revise the situation of developing countries (whether they are to be included/excluded from the measure) on a product category basis, taking into account more recent import data, namely, whether its exports [in the year 2021] exceeded the 3% of imports in any product category," the EC told Argus this week.
