Pakistan NTC ADC-66 — Definitive Anti-Dumping Duty on BOPP Self-Adhesive Tapes in Jumbo Rolls from China

Mechanism

The National Tariff Commission (NTC) conducted the ADC-66 investigation under Pakistan's Anti-Dumping Duties Act 2015 and the Anti-Dumping Duties Rules 2017, consistent with the WTO Anti-Dumping Agreement (Article VI GATT 1994). The investigation was triggered by a petition from M/s Universal Coating Films (Pvt.) Limited, a Lahore-based domestic producer of BOPP packaging tapes, which provided evidence of dumped Chinese imports and resultant material injury (price undercutting, declining capacity utilisation, and margin erosion).

Provisional phase: A provisional anti-dumping duty of 14.99% ad valorem was imposed effective 31 January 2025 for a four-month period, covering imports under PCT codes 3919.9010 and 3919.9090.

Final determination: On 24 May 2025, the NTC concluded the investigation and raised the definitive duty to 26.76% ad valorem, effective for five years from the commencement of the provisional duty (31 January 2025). The increase from 14.99% provisional to 26.76% definitive reflects the NTC's full computation of the constructed normal value vs. export price margin for cooperating and non-cooperating Chinese exporters.

BOPP self-adhesive tapes in jumbo rolls are an upstream intermediate product: large-format master rolls (typically 500m–5,000m in length, 1,000mm–1,500mm width) that are slit by downstream converters into the retail and industrial tape formats used in FMCG packaging, e-commerce fulfilment, carton sealing, and logistics across Pakistan's domestic market. China is the dominant global supplier of BOPP tape, with excess polyolefin and BOPP-film capacity providing structural cost advantages that enable below-cost export pricing.

Downstream implications

• Pakistani tape converters and packaging companies will face a ~27% landed-cost increase

on Chinese BOPP jumbo rolls, likely prompting some sourcing shift to non-dumped origins (India, Thailand, Malaysia, Korea).

• M/s Universal Coating Films and the narrow domestic BOPP tape manufacturing sector gain

a five-year protection window to invest in capacity and cost-reduction.

• This is the first NTC final-determination anti-dumping action filed on the IPTM register,

establishing Pakistan as an active trade-remedy issuer alongside its pre-existing industrial- policy cluster (SIFC, Balochistan Mines Act, National Minerals Harmonisation Framework, NEV policy, Brownfield Refinery Policy).

• The ADC-66 pattern is consistent with the global wave of EM governments invoking national

AD frameworks against Chinese excess-capacity exporters in commodity-intermediate sectors (polypropylene tapes sit alongside PTFE, titanium dioxide, met-coke, and steel bolt investigations filed from India and Australia in 2025–26).

Open questions

• Whether NTC will widen scope to cover slitted retail tapes (separate PCT codes) or to

target other source countries, as NTC has initiated a parallel investigation against Vietnam for BOPP adhesive tapes.

• Rate-review applications from cooperating Chinese exporters may result in NTC issuing

individual exporter duty rates (vs. the single 26.76% composite rate currently in force).

• Pakistan's BOPP film upstream capacity (tied to petrochemical feedstock imports from China)

may offset some of the converter cost relief.