Duty Angers Aluminum Firms In South Africa.

SA’s aluminium importers are angry over the timing of an application by primary aluminium producer Hulamin for 10% duty on imports of semi fabricated rolled aluminum products.

Mr Siyabulela Tsengiwe chief commissioner of International Trade Administration Commission of SA said that "We are open to requests for an extension by all interested parties that wish to lodge new or additional information once the deadline has been reached."

He said that such requests were standard procedure and could also come from parties that had missed the initial deadline on Friday.

Last year, Hulamin applied for 15% import duty on extruded products that it makes such as aluminium piping and window frames. At the time, importers were advised by Itac to raise objections through their industry body, the Aluminium Federation SA and were given plenty of notice. The duty was subsequently raised to 5%.

This time, importers said that they were given only days to respond when Afsa sent an e-mail to members on March 9, inviting them to a meeting on March 15 to review the potential impact of an application to Itac for an import duty on aluminum sheet products.

Mr Neville Breytenbach MD of Aluminum & Chemical Resources said that there was no formal notification up front with regard to objections to the application. The company imports value added rolled and extruded aluminium. Why should not apply to rolled products? We signed a register. The meeting was minuted, everybody objected except Hulamin.

He said that the last thing we need now is for this opportunistic, blanket type tariff to come in. Why should downstream manufacturers pay a premium on technology that is nonexistent in SA we want to increase local content.

Mr Thembinkosi Gamlashe communications manager Itac said that the commission’s investigation into Hulamin’s application was still at the preliminary stage. He said that a final decision was expected to be made on May 10th 2011. So far Itac had received objections from five companies over Hulamin’s application.

Mr Richard Jacob CEO of Hulamin said that last week his company could not compete with subsidized imports from Asia and that SA was the only country with a domestic aluminium rolled products industry that had no duty protection. He said that duties in the US, European Union, India, China and Brazil were at levels up to 16% and in India there was duty protection of 35% against Chinese imports.

However, importers said that the cost of Hulamin’s rolled product in the domestic market was steep, while it sold the same product more cheaply to its export customers. Hulamin imported product it did not make such as composite panels for buildings from China, that it re branded as Hulabond.

Source : steelguru.com