Hulamin have requested a duty increase on rolled aluminium, from the existing position of no duty, to a duty of 15%. If successful this would apply to all rolled aluminium imported under tariff headings 76.06 and 76.07 (a total of 19 tariff subheadings, accounting for R2bn worth of imports for the period July 2014 to June 2015). The chart below shows the trend in imports under these 2 tariff headings for the last 3 years. When this application was first circulated through the industry a few months ago, the list of requested tariff codes was shorter by 6 tariff codes in tariff heading 76.06. Since being included in the investigation, these additional codes have increased the total import value for the most recent year by R189m (equivalent to 12% of 76.06 and 9% of both tariff codes). I am not sure why the scope of the investigation has been expanded or perhaps more curiously, why these new tariff codes were not included in the first place. Reasons given for the duty increase request are:

• Loss of market share to cheaper imports
• As a result of cheap imports entering the country, being forced to widen the range of products manufactured, with less volume therefore being produced per product
• Reduction of 10% of its workforce
• Duty protection in foreign markets
• Over-reliance on exports.

Interested parties have until 9 October 2015 to respond.