Preliminary determination in alcoa’s antidumping petition

14 May 2004

Hulett Aluminium, the South African based producer of aluminium rolled products, announced today that the U.S. Department of Commerce (DOC) has issued its preliminary results in the antidumping investigation of Hulett’s series 6000 plate sales to the United States. The DOC’s findings reject Alcoa’s allegations that Hulett had been selling its series 6000 series aluminum plate into the United States at prices that produced dumping margins of over 100%. The DOC’s findings come after more than six months of investigating the antidumping allegation made by Alcoa, Inc. Peter Staude, Chairman of Hulett Aluminium, stated that he was pleased that the U.S. DOC had vindicated Hulett’s view that Alcoa’s allegations are without merit. He further stated that he was confident that the minor dumping margin of 4.33% (four point three three percent) preliminarily found by the DOC would not affect Hulett’s ability to continue to supply high quality plate to the U.S. market.;

Hulett had previously stated that that Alcoa’s allegation of being materially injured by reason of imports of a very narrowly defined range of series 6000 aluminium plate from South Africa, is outrageous. It has also questioned why Alcoa has ignored the significant volumes of lower priced imports from other countries, particularly Russia.

The DOC is expected to issue a final decision in the antidumping investigation in late July. Hulett will continue to co-operate fully with the U.S. government authorities investigating Alcoa’s allegations. Hulett Aluminium remains optimistic that the ongoing investigation will find that Hulett has not engaged in any injurious unfair trade practice through sales of its series 6000 aluminium plate to the United States.