Our import duties on Asian production keep rising: is moving it back to Europe cheaper on balance?

Not automatically, and rarely because of the duty itself. On a plastic consumer product the standard EU import duty sits in the low single digits, and that almost never offsets a higher European piece price. The sum flips once you count everything importing drags along with it: freight, the weeks of stock your lead time forces you to hold, clearance, scrap you only discover on arrival, and the odds of a product-specific measure landing on your category. So compare landed cost per good part at the volume you actually make, not the tariff line.

Which duties do you really pay on a product from Asia at the end of 2026?

Five charges, and they behave very differently. The reference date for every figure below is 2 November 2026. This is the kind of regulation that changes within a quarter, so check it again before you put it in a model.

• The third-country rate. For articles of plastics the EU customs tariff runs from 0 to 6.5%, depending on the subheading. Look up your own CN code in TARIC, because rates differ line by line within chapter 39.
• Anti-dumping and anti-subsidy duties. Product-specific, far higher, and without a transition period. Definitive duties of 4.3 to 45.3% have applied to passenger car and light truck tyres from China since 7 July 2026. That is probably not your product, but it shows the order of magnitude: a measure like that turns a business case over in one go.
• The steel regime. Regulation (EU) 2026/1384 has applied since 1 July 2026, with an annual quota of 18,345,922 tonnes and an out-of-quota duty of 50% instead of the previous 25%. From 1 October 2026 a certificate has to show where the steel was melted and poured. This hits metal parts, inserts and brackets, not your plastic components.
• CBAM. The definitive period started on 1 January 2026 and covers iron and steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, hydrogen and electricity. Importers staying under 50 tonnes per calendar year fall outside the authorisation and reporting obligation. Public sources contradict each other on when certificates have to be bought, so check that for your own year with the European Commission.
• Small parcels straight to the consumer. The exemption for consignments up to 150 euros ended on 1 July 2026, with a temporary customs duty of 3 euros per parcel and, from 1 November 2026, a 2 euro handling fee. That hits brands shipping from Asia straight to the customer, not those bringing containers into a European warehouse.

That is the heart of it. The standard rate is rarely the problem; the product-specific measure is, and it arrives without the kind of notice you can act on. It is also why companies move production out of China to Europe or elsewhere in Asia over a risk they are not yet paying for, rather than over an invoice they got last month.

How do you work out landed cost per good part?

Add up six items and divide by the share of good parts: ex-works piece price, freight per part, duty on the customs value, clearance and admin, the extra stock your lead time forces you to hold, and the scrap you only see on arrival. Keep the tool out of this sum and amortise it separately over the volume you are committed to, or a one-off investment disappears into a piece price you are using to compare quotes.

The item most often missing is stock. A sea shipment is weeks in transit, and because you cannot simply top up, safety stock sits on top of that. Those weeks cost interest, space and risk, and they also set the price of a design change: whatever is on the water has already been made.

Below is a worked example on invented assumptions. The amounts say nothing about what your product costs and are not a quotation; they only show how the sum runs. The assumptions: an 80 gram plastic part, 50,000 pieces a year, ten weeks in transit plus eight weeks of safety stock on the Asian route against three weeks of cover in Europe, 8% a year for capital and storage, and a 6.5% import duty.

| Worked example, 50,000 pieces a year | Made in Asia | Made in Europe | | --- | --- | --- | | Ex-works piece price | € 1.00 | € 1.30 | | Freight per part | € 0.08 | € 0.02 | | Duty, 6.5% on the customs value | € 0.07 | none | | Clearance and admin | € 0.01 | none | | Extra stock, 15 weeks | € 0.03 | none | | Scrap | 2%: € 0.02 | 1.5%: € 0.02 | | Landed cost per good part | € 1.21 | € 1.34 |

In this example Europe is 13 cents a part more expensive, duty included. The tipping point sits at a European piece price of about 1.17 euros, which is 17% above the Asian ex-works price. If your European quote comes in below that, Europe is cheaper. Above it, what you buy with the difference is not cost price but speed and proximity, and it pays to first see how far you can reduce the manufacturing cost of your existing product.

Now turn one assumption around. Add a 20% anti-dumping duty and the Asian sum rises to roughly 1.43 euros, making Europe 9 cents a part cheaper in this example. Double the weeks of stock, because you have to cover a seasonal peak, and the tipping point moves another few percent. That sensitivity is what you want to know before a measure exists, not after.

What does the move itself cost, and how long does it take?

The move is not in the piece price, which is exactly why it gets forgotten. Budget for four things: relocating or rebuilding the tool, a trial round with samples and a dimensional report, requalification of the product or your certification, and a period of running both sources because you do not yet dare switch the old one off.

The tool is the nervous part. Whether you can take it depends on three things: whether you can prove you own the tool, how many guaranteed shots are left, and whether it fits the machines and standards of the new moulder. Clamping, cooling and ejection are usually tuned to the original press. A tool that has run in one factory for years rarely arrives without wear, either.

Then set the one-off costs against the saving per part. In the worked example above there is no saving without an extra duty, so there is no payback. In the anti-dumping variant it saves 9 cents a part, which is 4,500 euros a year at 50,000 pieces. That tells you straight away whether this is a decision for this quarter or something to pick up with the next tool. A manufacturability review across the whole chain before you request quotes helps here: if the part would be drawn differently for a European process, you want to know that before you ship the steel, not after.

When does the sum flip, and when does it not?

It flips on freight, stock and risk, not on labour. Five situations where Europe wins in practice:

• Bulky parts with low value density. Shipping air is expensive; on a large, light part freight can be a quarter of the piece price.
• A product group already carrying measures, or likely to. Once a duty passes ten percent, the tipping point moves quickly.
• Volatile or short-lived demand. The shorter the life cycle, the more expensive stock on the wrong side of an ocean becomes.
• Many variants in small runs. Every variant needs its own minimum order quantity and its own stock.
• A design that is still moving. Pushing a change through takes weeks in a short chain instead of half a year.

And five where it does not flip: small, light parts with a lot of hand assembly; very high volumes with stable demand; processes or materials with little capacity in Europe; a tool built too tightly around a local press to move; and a product whose components mostly come from Asia anyway, because then you relocate the assembly and not the chain.

The honest downside of moving back: the piece price usually goes up, and it stays up, even if the duty that prompted the move falls away next year. Against that, you shrink lead time, stock and the odds of a surprise from Brussels all at once. Run it on your own figures before you make it a matter of principle, and keep the model, so you can run it again at every tariff change. How we build that comparison is set out in our process.

Production Heroes takes products from design to series production, from feasibility and cost price to sourcing and supply chain, and supplies moulds and tooling to manufacturers across Europe, from the Netherlands and its own presence in China.

Sources: the new EU steel regime, the annual quota of 18,345,922 tonnes and the doubling of the out-of-quota duty from 25 to 50% come from Regulation (EU) 2026/1384, in force since 1 July 2026, and the European Commission's summary of it (2026). The definitive anti-dumping duties of 4.3 to 45.3% on tyres from China come from Implementing Regulation (EU) 2026/1540, in force since 7 July 2026. The CBAM rules and the 50 tonne annual threshold come from Regulation (EU) 2023/956 and European Commission information on the definitive period (2026). The end of the 150 euro exemption, the temporary 3 euro customs duty and the 2 euro handling fee from 1 November 2026 come from European Commission information on the EU customs reform (2026). The 0 to 6.5% range for articles of plastics comes from public renderings of the EU customs tariff, chapter 39 (2026); the rate for your specific code is in TARIC. The worked example uses invented assumptions and is not a quotation.