India’s trade remedies authority has opened an anti-dumping investigation into thick polyester film from China, Singapore, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, the country’s second probe into PET film imports in less than a year and a fresh signal of New Delhi’s hardening line on low priced imports.
NEW DELHI, Aug. 19. India’s Directorate General of Trade Remedies has initiated an anti-dumping investigation into imports of Polyethylene Terephthalate film of thickness above 100 microns originating in or exported from China, Singapore, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates, opening a new front in the country’s expanding campaign against what domestic producers describe as unfairly priced polyester film flooding the Indian market.
The investigation, formally initiated on 19 August 2026 by the DGTR, the trade remedies arm of India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, follows an application filed by Garware Hi-Tech Films Ltd. The company asked the authority to examine whether thick gauge PET film used in industrial applications is being dumped into India at prices below normal value, and whether those imports are causing material injury to domestic manufacturers.
The initiation notification sets in motion a process that could end with anti-dumping duties on one of the most heavily traded specialty plastics in Asia. PET film above 100 microns is a workhorse material at the industrial end of the polyester film spectrum, used in electrical insulation, photovoltaic module backsheets, membrane switches, release liners, lamination, identity cards and a range of other engineering applications where thinner packaging grades will not serve.
The new case is separate from, and runs in parallel with, an earlier DGTR investigation into PET film initiated on 30 September 2025, which covered imports from the United States, Bangladesh, China and Thailand. In March 2026, India moved to impose provisional anti-dumping duties on PET films from Bangladesh, China and Thailand under that proceeding, according to reporting by the price reporting agency ICIS.
Taken together, the two proceedings mean PET film shipments into India from at least six countries are now under some form of trade remedy scrutiny. For global film producers, Indian converters and the packaging, electronics and solar supply chains that consume the material, the arithmetic of sourcing polyester film into the world’s fastest growing large economy has suddenly become considerably more complicated.
The New Investigation
According to the DGTR notification, the product under consideration is PET film of thickness above 100 microns, a definition that captures the heavy gauge segment of the market while excluding the thin films that dominate flexible packaging. Films in this band are typically produced on dedicated thick film lines and command higher margins than commodity packaging grades, which is precisely why domestic producers say the segment has become a magnet for aggressively priced imports.
Garware Hi-Tech Films, the applicant, is one of India’s longest established polyester film manufacturers and has increasingly focused its business on specialty and high value films. In its petition, the company sought coverage of film originating in or exported from the four named countries, language that is standard in Indian practice and is designed to capture both producers in those countries and traders who route material through them.
Under India’s anti-dumping rules, which track the World Trade Organization’s Anti-Dumping Agreement, the DGTR must now establish three things before it can recommend duties: that the subject imports are being dumped, meaning sold to India below their normal value in the home market; that the domestic industry is suffering material injury; and that the dumping is causing that injury.
The directorate will circulate detailed questionnaires to exporters, importers and Indian producers. Exporters in China, Singapore, Thailand and the UAE will be invited to register as interested parties and submit data on production costs, domestic prices and export prices. Companies that decline to cooperate risk having their margins determined on the basis of facts available, which in practice usually means the highest margins alleged in the petition.
If the evidence gathered in the early months of the investigation supports the petitioner’s claims, the DGTR can recommend provisional duties before the probe concludes. Final findings are ordinarily due within a year of initiation, extendable by six months, and any duties recommended take legal effect only when the Ministry of Finance issues a customs notification.
India’s Trade Remedy Machinery
The DGTR was created in 2018 by consolidating India’s earlier anti-dumping and safeguards directorates into a single national trade remedies authority. It investigates and recommends; the power to impose duties rests with the Department of Revenue in the Finance Ministry. That two step architecture gives the government a final political check on trade remedies, but it also produces occasional gaps between what investigators recommend and what actually reaches the customs tariff.
One such gap is currently drawing attention in New Delhi. In final findings dated 19 September 2025, the DGTR recommended anti-dumping duties of 24 percent to 52 percent on certain cranes imported from China. Nearly a year later, the Finance Ministry has yet to issue the notification that would give those duties legal force, according to Outlook Business, leaving domestic crane makers in limbo and importers uncertain about their forward exposure.
India is one of the world’s most frequent users of anti-dumping measures, and China is by a comfortable margin its most cited target. Petitioners across chemicals, plastics, metals, pharmaceuticals and machinery have turned repeatedly to the DGTR as import competition has intensified, and the authority’s 2026 docket reflects that breadth.
On 14 August, five days before the PET film initiation, the DGTR held an oral hearing in its investigation into imports of Halo-Isobutene-Isoprene Rubber from China and Singapore, a specialty synthetic rubber used in tyre inner liners and pharmaceutical stoppers. Active probes also cover an anti-tuberculosis drug imported from China and Thailand, and glass fibre and articles of glass fibre from China, Thailand and Bahrain.
Earlier in this cycle, India imposed anti-dumping duties on a water treatment chemical imported from China and Japan. Indian press reports have described the pattern as a deliberate, sector by sector tightening aimed at shielding domestic manufacturing investment, particularly in materials and intermediate goods, from a wave of low priced supply out of East and Southeast Asia.
A Second PET Film Case in Under a Year
The August initiation gives India two overlapping PET film investigations running at once, an unusual but not unprecedented situation that reflects both the breadth of the product and the geography of global supply. The first case, initiated on 30 September 2025, targeted PET film from the United States, Bangladesh, China and Thailand.
That earlier proceeding moved quickly. By March 2026, according to ICIS, India was planning provisional anti-dumping duties on PET films from Bangladesh, China and Thailand, an interim measure that signals investigators found prima facie evidence of dumping and injury strong enough to justify protection before final findings are reached.
China and Thailand now appear in both cases, an overlap that industry participants say is no accident. Both countries added substantial polyester film capacity during the pandemic era packaging boom, and both have been searching for export outlets since domestic demand growth cooled and global film prices slumped.
The scope of the two cases differs in an important way. The 2025 investigation is understood to address the broader PET film market, while the new probe is confined to film above 100 microns, the thick gauge industrial segment where Garware Hi-Tech Films concentrates much of its production. By carving out the heavy end of the market as a distinct product, the petitioner has effectively asked the DGTR to look separately at a segment where import dynamics, pricing and end uses differ materially from the commodity packaging trade.
Singapore and the UAE, the two new names on the respondent list, add another dimension. Neither is primarily known as a mass producer of polyester film for the world market, but both are significant trading and transshipment hubs, and the UAE hosts export oriented film manufacturing capacity, some of it built by groups with Indian roots. The inclusion of exported from language in the scope means material merely shipped through those jurisdictions can be examined alongside film actually made there.
The Petitioner’s Case
Garware Hi-Tech Films, headquartered in Maharashtra, traces its polyester film business back more than half a century and has repositioned itself over the past decade toward specialty products such as sun control films, paint protection films and high value industrial films. Thick PET film sits squarely within that strategy.
In seeking the investigation, the company argued in substance that imports of thick PET film from the four countries have surged at prices that undercut domestic offers, suppressing prices and eroding the profitability of Indian production. The DGTR’s decision to initiate indicates the authority found the application adequately documented and supported by evidence of dumping, injury and causation sufficient to open a formal inquiry.
Initiation is not a finding of guilt. Indian law requires the DGTR to satisfy itself only that the application contains sufficient prima facie evidence. Exporters and importers will now have the opportunity to contest the petitioner’s data, challenge the definition of the product under consideration and argue that any injury to the domestic industry has causes other than imports, such as global overcapacity, raw material costs or demand cycles.
Industry Reaction
Reaction along the Indian value chain split along predictable lines. Domestic film producers, several of which have invested in new thick film capacity in recent years, privately welcomed the initiation as overdue, arguing that imported film has been landing at prices no efficient Indian line can match and that trade remedies are the only tool available while global oversupply persists.
Packaging converters and industrial laminators, the businesses that buy PET film and turn it into finished components, expressed concern that a second round of duties would raise input costs in a market where film is already subject to provisional measures from the earlier case. Converters operating on thin margins say they have limited ability to pass higher film costs through to brand owners and electronics customers.
Importers and trading houses voiced a different worry: uncertainty. With two investigations in motion, overlapping country coverage and the possibility of provisional duties arriving mid contract, traders say quoting forward prices on imported film has become hazardous. Some report that Indian buyers are already demanding duty protection clauses in supply contracts, shifting trade remedy risk back onto overseas sellers.
Exporters in the four subject countries are expected to mount a vigorous defense. Producers in Thailand and the UAE, in particular, have significant exposure to India in some thick film grades, and the cost of losing competitive access to the Indian market would be difficult to offset in a global market already saturated with capacity.
Market and Economic Stakes
India’s polyester film market is among the fastest growing in the world, propelled by flexible packaging demand from fast moving consumer goods companies, a government led push into solar module manufacturing and steady growth in electronics assembly. Industry estimates generally put Indian PET film demand growth well above global averages, which is exactly why exporters with surplus capacity have targeted the market.
The thick film segment covered by the new probe is smaller by volume than packaging film but disproportionately important by value. Films above 100 microns feed electrical insulation for motors and transformers, backsheets and other components for solar modules, cards and laminates, industrial release applications and optical uses. Buyers in these segments prize consistency and certification, but they are also price sensitive enough that a duty of even modest size can redirect sourcing.
China dominates global PET film capacity and has been the central figure in the worldwide oversupply that developed after the pandemic packaging boom faded. Chinese producers built aggressively into 2022 and 2023, and as domestic demand disappointed, export volumes rose and prices fell across Asia. Indian producers argue that this overhang, not any failure of their own competitiveness, is what has depressed domestic film prices.
Thailand hosts world scale polyester film complexes with long export histories, including operations affiliated with Indian owned multinational film groups, and has been named in a string of Indian trade remedy cases across plastics and chemicals in recent years. The UAE similarly hosts export oriented film capacity in its free zones, while Singapore functions chiefly as a regional trading and distribution hub for petrochemical products, including films.
For the Indian economy, the calculus is familiar. Anti-dumping duties protect domestic manufacturing investment and employment in capital intensive film plants, but they raise costs for downstream converters, which employ far more people in aggregate, and ultimately for consumers of packaged goods, electronics and solar power. The DGTR is required to weigh injury to the domestic industry, but Indian law gives it limited scope to reject duties on broader public interest grounds, a feature critics of the system regularly point out.
Economists who follow Indian trade policy note that the country’s heavy use of anti-dumping measures sits somewhat awkwardly alongside its ambition to become a global manufacturing hub integrated into international supply chains. Duties on intermediate inputs like PET film can raise the cost base of exactly the export industries, from packaged food to solar modules, that the government is trying to cultivate through production linked incentive schemes.
Global Supply Chain Implications
For global buyers and sellers of polyester film, the immediate question is whether provisional duties will arrive in the new case, and how quickly. The precedent from the parallel PET film proceeding, where India moved toward provisional measures roughly six months after initiation, suggests that exporters in China, Singapore, Thailand and the UAE could face interim duties in the first half of 2027 if the investigation follows a similar arc.
Packaging supply chains have the most experience with this playbook. Flexible packaging converters serving Indian consumer brands have already been adjusting to the earlier case, and many have qualified alternative suppliers or shifted volumes to domestic producers. The thick film case will force a similar exercise on a different set of buyers: electrical laminators, card manufacturers, solar component suppliers and industrial converters.
The solar sector is a particular point of sensitivity. India is racing to expand domestic solar module production, and PET based backsheets remain a common construction for many module designs. Duties on thick PET film could raise backsheet costs or accelerate a shift to alternative constructions, at a moment when module makers are already navigating import restrictions on cells and other components.
Electronics is another exposed sector. Thick PET film goes into membrane switches, flexible printed circuit applications, insulation and display related uses. India’s growing electronics assembly base imports many of these components today, but as component manufacturing localizes under government incentives, duties on the underlying film will shape where that value is added.
For exporters, the strategic options are limited and familiar. They can cooperate fully with the DGTR in hopes of securing low individual dumping margins; they can redirect volumes to other markets, deepening price pressure elsewhere in Asia, Europe and Latin America; or they can consider supplying the Indian market through routes or product forms outside the scope of the investigation, a path that risks triggering anti-circumvention proceedings.
Trade lawyers note that the inclusion of Singapore and the UAE, both major transshipment centers, signals that Indian petitioners are increasingly alert to routing. Duties limited to producing countries can be undermined if material flows through third country hubs, and naming those hubs as subject countries from the outset closes off one of the most common workarounds before it develops.
Sourcing shifts are already visible in adjacent segments, according to market participants. Buyers who moved away from Chinese film after the first case have been testing suppliers in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and Malaysia, none of which is named in either Indian proceeding. If duties materialize in the thick film case as well, that redirection is likely to accelerate, tightening availability of duty free material and potentially firming prices for film from origins outside the two cases.
Domestic Indian capacity will absorb some of the demand. Several Indian producers have commissioned or announced thick film lines, and the prospect of a protected home market improves the economics of those investments. But qualification cycles in electrical, solar and card applications are long, and converters warn that supply of specific certified grades could tighten in the interval between duties arriving and domestic capacity fully qualifying.
What Happens Next
The procedural clock is now running. Interested parties will have a defined window, typically thirty days from the notification and extendable on request, to register and file responses. The DGTR will then verify data, may conduct on the spot checks, and will publish its preliminary analysis. An oral hearing, like the one held in the butyl rubber case on 14 August, will give all sides a chance to argue the record.
A preliminary finding could support provisional duties as early as the first half of 2027. Final findings would ordinarily follow within twelve months of initiation, and any definitive duties would then run for five years, subject to midterm and sunset reviews. Each stage can be litigated, and Indian trade remedy determinations are regularly challenged before the Customs Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal and the higher courts.
The crane case delay is the caveat that hangs over every Indian trade remedy proceeding. A DGTR recommendation is not a duty until the Finance Ministry acts, and as Outlook Business has reported, the ministry has at times allowed recommendations to languish, whether for macroeconomic, diplomatic or fiscal reasons. Exporters and importers alike will be watching not just the directorate’s findings but the government’s appetite for enforcing them.
What is not in doubt is the direction of travel. With two PET film cases, a butyl rubber hearing, probes into pharmaceuticals and glass fibre, and duties already in place on inputs from water treatment chemicals upward, India’s trade remedy system is running at full stretch, and polyester film has moved to the center of its docket. For the global film industry, the message from New Delhi on 19 August was unambiguous: access to the Indian market will increasingly be conditioned on prices the DGTR considers fair.