The European Commission has imposed anti-dumping duties ranging between 19.7 percent and 44 percent on imports of optical fibre cables from China.
The strongly subsidized Chinese optical fibre cable industry has benefitted from an unfair competitive advantage, allowing it to increase significantly exports to the EU at heavily undercut prices during recent years.
EU manufacturers believe China is selling optical fibre cable in Europe at artificially low prices.
Europacable, which brought the complaint on behalf of the EU producers, in 2020 said some 1.2 million kilometres (745,000 miles) were sold in Europe last year, with 15-20 percent coming from China, in a total EU market worth about 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion).
Chinese imports rose by 150 percent from 2016 to 2019, the industry group said.
The largest producers in the EU are Italy’s Prysmian Group, U.S. company Corning and France-based Nexans and Acome.
Major Chinese optical fibre cable makers include Yangtze Optical FC, Hengtong Group, Fiberhome and Futong.
The Commission has already carried out a series of investigations into glass fibre products from China and imposed tariffs. It also has 29 ongoing trade defence investigations, 18 of them including products from China.
Prysmian Group is the world leader in the energy and telecom cable systems industry. Prysmian Group has sales of over €10 billion and about 30,096 employees in over 50 countries and 104 plants.
“We welcome today’s European Commission’s decision and it is reassuring to see that Europe is able to strongly act against unfair practices,” Philippe Vanhille, EVP Telecom Division at Prysmian Group, said in a statement.
