European PET market participants hope that the EU's anti-dumping investigation, if successful, could help preserve the profitability of the European PET industry and investments in recyclers needed to reach legislative targets, which are already in place.
The European Commission has started an investigation covering virgin and recycled PET from Vietnam. The anti-dumping complaint, filed by industry association PET Europe, includes concerns that dumping of PET imports into the EU harms the European recycling industry.
The complaint summary states that "with imports of vPET depressing the price of rPET, production of rPET becomes economically unviable, leading recyclers to bankruptcy."
The investigation covers imports of PET from Vietnam with an intrinsic viscosity of 78 ml/g or higher, classified under HS code 390761 that arrived in the EU in 2024. The complaint from European market participants states that import dumping "directly impacts the EU's recycling and sustainability targets, the success of which depends on a successful recycling loop. Innovation and know-how of European rPET producers are seriously impaired by dumped imports."
The application for the investigation says imports of low cost vPET encourages downstream users to increase consumption of vPET rather than using more rPET to save on costs, particularly important in the current challenging economic environment, when cost saving is at the forefront of commercial decisions. The premium for recycled material over virgin PET in Europe is at its highest since the end of 2022. Recyclers have reported demand for recycled material this year has been impacted by low virgin prices and the focus on sustainability has become less of a priority as companies have wider economic concerns.
