China’s Trina Solar decides to leave EU price undertaking

Chinese photovoltaics (PV) maker Trina Solar Ltd (NYSE:TSL) has decided to supply its European customers solely from its tariff-free photovoltaics (PV) production plants overseas, so it is no longer subject to the EU-China trade rules for solar products.

The PV products maker deems that it is best to leave the EU Price Undertaking (UT) so it could be able to expand its business in the region and to regain market share under a more flexible pricing strategy.

The move comes not long after the European Commission (EC) started an expiry review of the anti-dumping (AD) and anti-subsidy (AS) duties on imports of crystalline silicon PV modules and cells from the Asian country, which otherwise would have ended on December 7, 2015. In a press release on Friday, Trina Solar said that the watchdog’s actions constitute a violation of the principles of free and fair trade.

“Furthermore, we believe the current Minimum Import Price (MIP) does not reflect the ongoing market trends in the solar sector, particularly as average selling prices in major markets continue to decline at a faster than expected rate, with downward pressure anticipated to continue for the foreseeable future,” chairman and CEO, Jifan Gao, explained. Trina Solar sees this misinterpretation of the original UT not only as disruptive to its ongoing global expansion strategy, but also as limiting to its growth potential in the European region by making it lose competitiveness to non-Chinese peers.

In mid-November, Chinese sector player Chint Solar, also known as Astronergy, also withdrew from the UT by choosing to serve the EU through its PV production plant in Germany.

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