KEY POINTS:
A New Zealand stationery manufacturer has won a ruling against Asian exporters that says their price cuts damaged the local market.
The Ministry of Economic Development has upheld two complaints from Croxley Stationery against exporters from China and Malaysia who were undercutting prices on diaries and school stationery by offering an export price cheaper than that available in their home market - a process called dumping.
Dumping is not illegal, but countries can impose anti-dumping duties if their domestic industry is being harmed.
Croxley managing director Joe Naus said the continual erosion of market share and prices alerted the company to abnormal activity in the market.
"We have had competition over a reasonable period of time from Asia - we're in an open market obviously - [and] what we concluded over time is that we believed a degree of what we were seeing as competition was dumping."
Naus said the dumping resulted in inventory write-offs, market share loss and declines in production levels, sales volumes and profitability.
He said the effect on market share in the diary market was a loss "by tens of [percentage] points" to imported products and prices in the school stationery market had fallen over the past five years at a time when costs had been rising.
"The fact that the ministry found in our favour gives us some reassurance our New Zealand manufacturing base has some validity," said Naus.
"As an employer you have a sense of responsibility if the employment of your people is under threat by some activity that you see is maybe unfair."
Croxley employs 230 people across two sites in Avondale and Papakura, manufacturing paper-based stationery and importing a range of products.
The sale of diaries and school stationery accounts for around 20 per cent of the company's total business.
Naus said it would be 2009 before the action had an impact on the market.
He reassured parents they would not be seeing a jump in stationery prices as a result of the action.
The ministry had imposed duties on the Asian exporters, ranging from 5 to 164 per cent for diaries and 3 to 73 per cent for school stationery.
Since 2000, the ministry has completed 24 dumping investigation and imposed anti-dumping duties in 14 cases. No anti-subsidy investigations have been done in the same period.
