EU extends protection of Greek, Spanish battery producers

The European Union renewed for another five years a tariff against South Africa on a material for consumer batteries, saying Greek producer Tosoh Hellas AIC and Spain’s Cegasa Internacional SA need longer protection.

The EU reimposed the 17.1 percent duty on imports of electrolytic manganese dioxide from South Africa.

The bloc introduced the levy in 2008 to punish Delta EMD Pty, South Africa’s only known exporting producer of electrolytic manganese dioxide, for allegedly having sold the material in Europe below cost, a practice known as dumping.

Tosoh Hellas and Cegasa Internacional, the EU’s only producers of electrolytic manganese dioxide, are “still in a fragile and vulnerable situation,” the bloc said on Monday. [Bloomberg]