Industry awaits EU anti-dumping report. DAMIEN TOMLINSON has the story.

The hand pallet truck is one of the most simple of all materials handling machines, but the industry is anything but simple or basic.

Just like other manufacturing industries worldwide, the breaking down of trade barriers with the eastern world has been very positive for consumers, bringing increased competition, cheaper manufacturing and greater volumes of machines onto the market.

But just as competition has ensured technological advances and cheaper products reach end users sooner, the development has put pressure on incumbents to stay ahead of the pack as brand awareness increasingly plays second fiddle to price, technology and service in showrooms around the world.

Nowhere in the world is competition more intense than in the European Union (EU), where several manufacturers vie for the same territory and intense research and development results in better forklifts.

The European Commission's (EC) Department of Trade is expected to finalise an investigation into Chinese hand pallet truck manufacturers this month after European competitors made a trade practices complaint.

Four manufacturers, which Forkliftaction.com News sources say include BT Industries, Franz Kahl GmbH, Pramac Lifter and Bolzoni Auramo, lodged a complaint with the EU last March, accusing Chinese hand pallet truck manufacturers of flooding the European market with cheap products (Forkliftaction.com News #163).

The manufacturers, which the EC says represent "more than 60 per cent of the total (EU) production of hand pallet trucks and their essential parts", claimed the dumping of cheap Chinese products had negatively impacted their financial performances, margins and employment, in breach of EC regulation 384/96 (1995).

The EC said the complainant manufacturers had supplied evidence that imports of hand pallet trucks and parts from China had increased, and that its investigation would "determine whether the product concerned originating in the People's Republic of China is being dumped and whether this dumping has caused material injury".

The Chinese manufacturers involved have not been named, but the EC said in a notice announcing the investigation that there was an "apparent large number of parties involved". The EC planned to analyse a sample of the market, and contact relevant representative bodies in China for export and other trade and market information.

The EC defines a product as being "dumped" if "its export price is less than a comparable price for the like product, in the ordinary course of trade, as established for the exporting country", meaning that if a hand pallet truck is cheaper in its destination country than its home country, it may be classed as having been "dumped" on the foreign market.

According to Forkliftaction.com's source, the EC could deliver its report into the allegations as soon as this month, and the result could be financially disastrous for Chinese producers involved.

The EC ruling on anti-dumping specifies that an "anti-dumping" duty can be placed on countries that are found to have breached the trade rules. The penalty could be as high as 45 per cent of the trade price of each dumped unit, which could total millions of dollars for Chinese producers, should the EC rule in favour of the complainants.

According to EC rules regarding the investigation of anti-dumping allegations, a report on the matter was due 15 months from the April publication of the EC's official notice in the Official Journal of the European Union.

Forkliftaction.com's source said the fact that the EC may report as soon as this month meant it had either found little evidence to support the anti-dumping allegations, or the opposite.

"The manufacturers involved claimed the prices of hand pallet trucks from China were vastly different in Canada and the USA than in Europe," he said.

"If the EC finds prices were substantially different, it will find for the complainants and award significant penalties to those identified as offenders.

"This has been going on for well over a year, and the companies making the allegations have apparently suffered greatly.

"The whole industry is waiting anxiously for the ruling of the EC to come out - there is a lot riding on it."

Stay tuned to Forkliftaction.com News for the latest update on the anti-dumping investigation. Part two of our special report on manual materials handling equipment will appear in next week's newsletter.