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The decision had been expected on Friday July 19 and was published via a pre-disclosure document, but was warmly welcomed by European biofuel interest groups, which had complained that the influx of Chinese used cooking oil-based (UCO) biodiesel had caused serious damage to the bloc’s producers.
Thirty-nine companies would be subject to 36.4% provisional anti-dumping duty, according to documents seen by Fastmarkets, with another three named companies subject to penalties ranging between 12.8% and 36.4%.
Companies that cooperated with the EC’s investigation would face 23.7% duty.
The European Waste-based and Advanced Biofuels Association (EWABA) warmly welcomed the decision and hoped that it would “normalize” the market after a period of “extreme adversity” since late 2022.
“Today is a great day for the biodiesel industry. Our members’ margins have been negative for the most part of two years,” Angel Alberdi, secretary general of EWABA, said in a press release also published on Friday.
But the European Biodiesel Board (EBB) expressed “grave concern” that the decision – which it said would apply to hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO) and the staple biodiesel blend FAME – would not also consider Chinese sustainable aviation fuel (SAF).
“In the [European] Union’s interests, EBB expects the European Commission to address unfair trade from Chinese SAF producers, which would otherwise seriously damage the industry and lead to a reliance on China in the future,” a press release from the EBB said.
“Our European businesses have been suffering for far too long under the pressure of unfairly priced Chinese imports, and we are very happy to see the European Commission take action,” EBB president Dickon Posnett said.
Finally, Brussels-based industry group Transport & Environment described the move as “a step in the right direction” but warned that tariffs alone would not prevent “mislabeled palm oil from entering the European market.”
Precise volumes were very difficult to gather, but analysts at European investment bank UBS estimated that 1.8 million tonnes of Chinese biodiesel had arrived in Europe in 2023, weighing on physical biodiesel prices and affecting margins for European producers.
Fastmarkets’ pricing data showed that the physical premium to buy waste-based biodiesel, known as UCOME, peaked in mid-August 2022 at $1,300 per tonne over the ICE gasoil futures contract.
But by the beginning of October the same year, that had already dropped to $795 per tonne, and it bottomed out at just $345 per tonne in February 2024.
That reflected the oversupply of UCOME in the main Amsterdam-Rotterdam-Antwerp hub, with the sustained pressure on prices also weighing on prices for rapeseed-based biodiesel, RME, and the main FAME blend.
That in turn led to mounting complaints from producers and their industry bodies, with both the EBB and EWABA at the forefront of calls to initiate anti-dumping investigations.
While UCOME premiums have since recovered, physical prices were broadly stable when the news broke, trading at $590-620 per tonne in late-Friday business.
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