Delta charged up by US antidumping threat
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Trade and Industry Editor
SOUTH Africa's Delta Electrical, the world's leading supplier of a black chemical powder which is a key material used in dry-cell batteries, is having to defend its exports to the US against allegations of dumping on theUS market.
Delta CE Brian Wright said yesterday a US competitor was demanding that an antidumping duty be slapped on Delta Electrical's exports to the US.
If the duty is imposed, it could make it too expensive for the local company to continue to supply the US market.
The US is the major market for Delta for the battery ingredient, called electrolytic manganese dioxide (EMD), accounting for 65% of combined South African and Australian sales.
Delta Electrical has EMD plants in Nelspruit and in Newcastle, New South Wales.
US competitor Kerr-McGee Chemical filed the antidumping petition at the end of last week, targeting EMD exports to the US from Australia, China, Greece, Ireland, Japan and SA. The petition alleges that "a significant volume of heavily dumped imports has caused material injury to the US EMD industry".
The US company said the imports had forced it to suspend output at its plant in Nevada, placing employees on leave.
Wright said the news of the antidumping action had come as a shock. Delta was seeking advice from experts on antidumping, and would defend itself.
"We have a number of customers in the US it accounts for 65% of the combined sales from our plants in SA and in Australia," he said.
However, the senior manager for tax and legal at PricewaterhouseCoopers Riaan de Lange cautioned that any antidumping petition has to be taken very seriously.
"An antidumping duty on exports of EMD could be prohibitive, and could signal an end to such exports into the US," he said.
"If this is successful in the US, there could be similar antidumping actions from other countries to which EMD is exported."
Wright said that he was confident that Delta could put up a good case to prove it has not being dumping - for instance by showing that its prices in SA are lower than those charged in the US.
To prove there had been dumping, the US complainant would need to show that prices were unrealistically low on EMD exported into the US market, and that this had caused injury to US producers.
Meanwhile, Wright said that both the SA and Australian governments would be approached to seek a longer term solution to the antidumping threat in the free trade area negotiations which each is conducting with Washington.
The SA steel industry has already called on SA trade officials to raise the issue of antidumping during negotiations with their American counterparts.
Delta Electrical closed....
Aug 05 2003 07:34:58:000AM John Fraser Business Day 1st Edition
Tuesday
05 August 2003
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