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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2012
41
Katana Summit, and Broadwind Energy – at the Commerce
Department. The complaint must make its way through
another government agency, the International Trade
Commission, then back to Commerce for a determination
on whether or not the Chinese and Vietnamese manu-
facturers were subsidised by their governments to sell
steel towers below cost in the US, damaging the American
industry. At that point, in perhaps a year, duties could
be imposed.
The domestic wind turbine industry installed about 2,900
such towers in 2010 and probably more in 2011. As
described in the
New York Times
, the companies bringing
the complaint buy high-quality plate steel and cut it so that
it forms a slightly conical shape when rolled into a cylinder.
They weld the long seam in the rolled structures, called
cans, and then stack the cans to form taller units, each with
a flange at top and bottom. The units are shipped to wind
farms where they are bolted together to form towers. These
can reach 300 feet and weigh 350 tons. The largest sell for
around $600,000, a price dictated largely by the price of
the steel.
Imports into the US of towers from Vietnam and China
roughly doubled in 2011, according to Alan H Price, a
lawyer at the Washington, DC-based
firm Wiley Rein,
which filed the case. An executive at Katana Summit,
a coalition member, said that imports had been taking
US market share for the last several years and now had
about half the market. The complaint seeks duties of more
than 64 per cent on Chinese imports and more than 59 per
cent on Vietnamese imports.
❖
❖
The United Steelworkers union, which has brought
complaints against foreign steel manufacturers, is
not directly involved in this case. But a spokesman,
Gary Hubbard, said: “We are encouraged that domestic
producers of wind towers are standing up to fight unfair
trade practices by foreign producers in renewable
energy products.”
In fact, as noted by
Times
reporters Matthew L Wald
and Keith Bradsher, the American wind industry is itself
subsidised, mainly through a production tax credit. But
by all accounts the scale of Chinese subsidies is larger
by far. (“Four US Makers of Towers for Wind Turbines
File Complaint Over Steel Subsidies,” 29
th
December).
In brief . . .
❖
❖
The necessity for many utility companies in the US
to upgrade their facilities to meet federal emissions
standards has led a succession of multimillion-dollar
jobs for one Midwestern steel fabricator. Merrill Iron &
Steel
(
Schofield, Wisconsin) specialises in steel frames
for buildings intended for use by the utility and energy
industries. The nearly 50-year-old company found its
niche in the utility business in the early 2000s when
Wisconsin Public Service Corp engaged it to provide
steel for a new power plant, and Merrill says that sales
to the utility industry now comprise about 50 per cent of
its business.
Recently Merrill Iron has been making steel parts for a
biomass power plant, the $255 million joint project of a
paper mill and the Milwaukee-based utility We Energies.