WCA March 2012

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.

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Wire & Cable ASIA – March/April 2012