Legal clarity on the amount of processing that an imported metal must receive in order for it to be considered a new product for the purposes of re-exporting has emerged from a European Court of Justice (ECJ) case regarding Chinese silicon metal.

    Germany’s Hoesch Metals & Alloys GmbH was challenging a decision by the Aachem customs office over whether silicon metal it was importing from India should have been regarded as “made in India”, where it was being separated, crushed, purified, sieved, sorted and packaged.

    The customs officials regarded it as coming from China, the source of the basic metal, claiming the processing had not turned it into a new product.