The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties ranging from 7.2% to 19.2% on Chinese steel wind turbine (SWT) towers to protect the European wind energy sector.

The Commission found that Chinese firms had dumped about €300 million (~$337 million) worth of steel wind turbine towers annually by undercutting prices and hurting European producers.

On 21 October 2020, the European Commission initiated an anti-dumping investigation on steel wind towers from China, following a complaint by the European Wind Tower Association.

The Commission found that Chinese imports increased their European market share from 25% in 2017 to 34% in July 2019.  In contrast, the domestic steel wind turbine’s market share fell from 69% in 2017 to 56% in 2019. The profitability of the domestic steel wind turbine industry also shrank from 3.6% in 2017 to a loss of 1.4% in 2019.

The investigation found that the jobs in the manufacture of steel wind turbines dropped by 5% over the period considered. Productivity fell from 0.71 towers in 2017 to 0.68 towers per employee.

The dumped imports of the sampled exporting producers showed weighted average undercutting margins between 2.7% and 5.1%.

Based on the definitive dumping margin and injury margin, the Commission imposed an anti-dumping duty of 7.5% on Chengxi Shipyard, 7.2% on Penglai Dajin, 14.4% on Suzhou Titan, and 11.2% on other cooperating companies, and 19.2 % on all other companies.

The Commission argues the imposition of anti-dumping duties will ensure fair, competitive conditions for sales of steel wind towers in the European market. Steel wind tower production is economically significant for the European Union (EU), with a yearly market value of around €1 billion (~$1.13 billion).

In April this year, under the United States Department of Commerce, the International Trade Administration had recommended the imposition of countervailing duty against wind energy equipment manufacturers from India and Malaysia.

In 2017, the office of the Directorate General of Anti-Dumping and Allied Duties had recommended the imposition of anti-dumping duty on castings for wind-operated electricity generators originating in or exported from China.