EU Opens UAN Dumping Inquiry
The European Union has opened an inquiry into whether the U.S., Russia and Trinidad are dumping UAN, according to a Bloomberg report on Aug. 13. As reported in Green Markets, U.S. producer CF Industries Holdings Inc., Deerfield, Ill., had indicated rumors of a possible investigation, however, last week the European Commission, said at that time one had not begun.
The inquiry will determine whether shipments from Russia, the U.S. and Trinidad and Tobago to the E.U. are “being dumped and whether the dumped imports have caused injury to the union industry,” the European Commission, the bloc’s trade authority in Brussels, says in the Official Journal. According to the report, the investigation was prompted by a June 29 complaint filed by Fertilizers Europe on behalf of producers that account for more than 50 percent the E.U.’s output of UAN.
Under new E.U. rules that speed up dumping probes, the commission has eight months to decide whether to impose provisional antidumping duties against the three countries and 14 months to decide whether to apply “definitive” levies, which usually last for five years.
CF has already alerted analysts that UAN exports to the E.U. account for about only 1 percent of EBITDA and that it can readily market its product elsewhere.