Posted on 07 Feb 2025
India’s Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) has renewed the BIS licence certificate for Vietnamese steelmaker, Formosa Ha Tinh Steel Corporation, Kallanish notes, allowing the company to trade in the country.
The renewal is applicable for specific hot rolled coils and strips of grades including HR0 and IS 1079:2017. It applies to these grades with thickness of 1.2-6mm, width of 900-1560mm. It excludes addition of micro-alloying elements as-rolled HR1 HR2 HR3 HR4, BIS says.
Formosa’s BIS license validity date is until 4 December 2025. The renewal comes after its previous licence expired in December 2024 (see Kallanish passim).
The industry reaction to the re-entry of Vietnamese imported steel into the Indian market has been mixed, with some saying this will lead to an increase in imports and put more pressure on the domestic steel market. However, many believe it is unlikely to have a large impact in the near term, due to the safeguard probe outcome still awaited.
A domestic trader says this will lead to higher imports, while another says it could lead to a “difficult time” for domestic steel producers.
However, the majority of traders and market participants anticipate it is unlikely to have a significant impact.
“I do not see any impact, [as the] safeguard duty is coming, so Indian mills would not be worried,” a source says.
In December 2024, the Directorate General of Trade Remedies (DGTR), the Indian commerce ministry’s trade investigation body, initiated a safeguard investigation on imports of non-alloy and alloy flat steel products (see Kallanish passim).
In August 2024, India also initiated an anti-dumping investigation into the import of hot rolled flat products from Vietnam, following a complaint filed by the Indian Steel Association (ISA). The probe’s focus was on hot rolled flat products of alloy or non-alloy steel, not clad, not plated or coated, of a thickness up to 25mm and width up to 2100mm with thicknesses reaching up to 25mm and widths of up to 2,100mm (see Kallanish passim).
This came after Vietnam launched a probe on HRC from India and China (see Kallanish passim).
India turned into a net finished steel importer in the fiscal year ending March 2024 (FY24). Finished steel imports rose by 38.2% year-on-year to 8.32 million tonnes. Exports grew 11.5% to 7.49mt. The country has remained a net importer of finished steel in April-December 2024, as imports increased by 22.7% y-o-y to 7.4mt. While exports fell 24.6% y-o-y to 3.6mt (see Kallanish passim).
Source:Kallanish
