An Australian Customs investigation into the possible dumping of large amounts of a herbicide used for weed control from China has been welcomed by local herbicide companies.
The Australian Customs and Border Protection Services is looking into the alleged dumping of glyphosate from China to Australia throughout last year.
The practice involves selling significant quantities of a product well below its normal value.
Chemical company Nufarm, which operates at Laverton North in Victoria and at Kwinana in Western Australia, lodged the complaint.
It claims cheap imports of glyphosate from China resulted in a 20 per cent reduction in Australian production volumes in the 2010/11 financial year.
Nufarm said that at the same time there had been a 393 per cent increase in imports of the herbicide.
CropLife Australia, the peak body representing the agricultural chemical sector, believes international trade arrangements may have been breached.
“These are matters that are globally governed through the World Trade Organisation and it’s against the agreed international trading rules,” CropLife Australia head Matthew Cossey said.
WA company 4Farmers, which imports the chemical from China, says if Customs upholds the complaint, farmers may need to prepare for a price rise.
“This is a dumping duty so they’re saying glyphosate’s being dumped in Australia below the cost of production and so there’s a dumping duty that they can apply for to protect locally produced product,” 4Farmers’s general manager Neil Mortimore says.
“We don’t think there is glyphosate being dumped and if Customs do the analysis correctly, we are confident that there won’t be any dumping duty that comes about.”
A spokesperson for Australian Customs said it was not investigating the illegal importation of the herbicide, but whether it was being sold at a price below its normal market value.
Dumping duties would apply if that were found to be the case, she said.
“The Australian plant science industry is worth more than $1.5 billion to the Australian economy annually and directly employs thousands of people around the country,” Mr Cossey said.
“Accordingly, the government needs to ensure that the Australian plant science industry is protected against breaches of international trade rules, such as dumping.”
Australia’s other major maker of crop protection chemicals, Accensi, had also been affected, Mr Cossey said.
