Argentine Beekeepers' Magazine

(Espacio Apícola, June 24th, 2021) Finally, after two defections, the Asociación de Cooperativas Argentinas C.L. (ACA) and Nexco S.A. will be the two Argentine companies investigated by the United States Department of Commerce (DOC) in the antidumping actions promoted by two associations of US beekeepers.

Two Argentine companies were left behind, Industrial Haedo and CIPSA, which refused to participate in the investigation. This means that these two companies will be sanctioned with the highest tariff and a punitive tariff that virtually takes them out of the honey market in the United States.

From the investigation, which the DOC began last May 11th, the tariffs to be paid by the two investigated companies will be determined. In principle, an average of them would be obtained to apply to the rest of the Argentine companies that export honey to the United States. Then each company may appeal to the US International Trade Commission (ITC) in order to achieve a lower tariff if they consider it feasible.

However, sources linked to specialized legal studies on the subject have warned us that if ACA and Nexco make a defence such that their sanction falls below a minimum threshold the DOC will prorate those tariff with the maximum suggested during preliminar determination. The latter would not only force the rest of the companies to appeal to the ITC, with all the costs that this implies, but would also delay even more the normalization of the shipment of honey from Argentina to the United States.

At the moment, there are already two companies that will be left out of this market and that handled a significant share of it. CIPSA even has problems in the payment chain since last March and it is in a restructuring process.

Since the DOC investigation began, only ACA, Nexco S.A. and Patagonik Food S.A. have signed up to appear before the DOC. Of these, ACA and Nexco, the recently nominated for the investigation, have been making frequent presentations to the DOC. Deadline to submit section A of the questionaire sent by the DOC expires next July 8th. This questionaire consists of five sections. Everything seems to indicate that this documentation will be presented in a timely manner. For its part, ACA has already requested to extend the deadline for submitting the company's financial report, initially requested for July 1st, until the end of September when the DOC was originally due to have a Preliminary Determination. The reasons are reasonable but will undoubtedly delay the next steps of the investigation. The DOC has extended it only to August 31st.