8 April 2019
UK Steel has produced comprehensive guidance on the subject of Rules of Origin. This follows concerns about the reduced appetite of EU customers to continue purchasing UK steel on the grounds that it could reduce the ability of EU manufacturers to export their steel containing goods to certain countries tariff free following Brexit (i.e. any of the 70 countries with which the EU has an FTA – such as Canada, Japan and South Korea).
The guidance aims to equip members with the information to have more detailed discussion with customers and, hopefully, assuage some concerns about the risks of continuing to use UK steel. As you will see from the guidance, many products will obtain EU origin simply as a result of being manufactured in the EU regardless of the origin of the steel that was used to make them – manufacturers of such products should have no concern in continuing to use UK origin steel. For some products, like car bodies, there is a value threshold to achieve in order to be considered of EU origin – it is in relation to such products that EU manufacturers concerns may have some validity and discussions are likely to be more complex.
We have also produced a companion document: ‘Simplified Summary of rules of origin affecting steel products’. This takes you through the basics of how rules of origin effect steel products and explains the coding system used in the main summary guidance document.