Why Taiwan

Taiwan is the world's third largest exporter of fasteners. In 2022 exports reached a record 1.55 million tonnes. The cluster around Gangshan in Kaohsiung holds more than seven hundred screw factories and accounts for roughly seventy per cent of Taiwanese exports. It is the most fastener-intensive industrial region in the world, and the reason the area has been called the Screw Kingdom for decades.

The sector is predominantly second and third generation family businesses of fifty to three hundred people. Over the past fifteen years it has moved upmarket into automotive, aerospace, medical and custom cold-formed work. For you that means a supplier accustomed to German and American requirements, but who often has no contact at all in the Benelux.

The EU levies anti-dumping duties on Chinese fasteners. Not on Taiwanese ones. That is the whole mechanism, and it is verifiable in TARIC.

The fastener measure runs through Regulation (EU) 2022/191, in force since 18 February 2022. Non-cooperating Chinese producers pay 86.5 per cent. The threaded rod measure is newer: Regulation (EU) 2025/2153 of 22 October 2025, at 54.7 to 72.3 per cent.

Taiwan is not duty-free on everything, and anyone suggesting otherwise is not telling the whole story. Stainless steel butt-welding pipe fittings from Taiwan carry a duty of 5.1 to 12.1 per cent, extended to around April 2028. And the Chinese duty on steel tube and pipe fittings was extended to Taiwan among others through an anti-circumvention investigation. Neither touches ordinary fasteners, but always check the specific CN code before you calculate.

Fasteners under CN 7318 fall within CBAM, the European carbon border adjustment mechanism, and the definitive phase began on 1 January 2026. For most smaller importers this is not a problem: under Regulation (EU) 2025/2083 there is a threshold of fifty tonnes of CBAM goods per importer per calendar year. Stay below it and you are fully exempt. No authorisation, no reporting, no certificates.

Above it, you must become an authorised CBAM declarant. Applications ran to 31 March 2026, certificate sales start on 1 February 2027, and the first surrender for import year 2026 is due by 30 September 2027. A container of standard fasteners weighs towards twenty tonnes, so the threshold is reachable. It is worth doing the arithmetic.

Kaohsiung to Rotterdam by sea. Because of the situation in the Red Sea many services route around the Cape of Good Hope, which puts the voyage at roughly forty to fifty-five days rather than thirty to thirty-five via Suez. For a made-to-order item, count on several months from order to delivery: thirty to sixty days production, plus the voyage, plus customs clearance.

A twenty-foot container of fasteners is heavy before it is full. Bolts are dense, so you reach the weight limit of around twenty-eight tonnes while space remains. At smaller volumes, consolidating several buyers into one container is often the only way the economics work.

EORI number.

You cannot import without one.

Article 23 VAT deferment licence.

This shifts import VAT into your regular VAT return instead of paying it at the border. You declare the amount and deduct it in the same return, so it nets to zero. Without the licence you pre-finance twenty-one per cent of the invoice value at customs and wait for the refund. Many smaller importers do not know this exists. It is probably the most valuable form in this whole story.

Customs value and commission.

A genuine buying commission, paid by you to your own agent for representing you in the purchase, does not form part of the customs value and is therefore not dutiable. A selling commission is. This is set out in Article 71 of the Union Customs Code. My fee is structured as a buying commission and shown separately.

Documents.

Commercial invoice, packing list, bill of lading and a certificate of origin. That last one is what keeps your shipment outside the Chinese anti-dumping duty, so it is not a formality.

On very cheap bulk commodity items carrying no duty, China often still wins. At very small volumes a Taiwanese factory's minimum order quantity is not economic. On some items Vietnam wins through zero duty under the EVFTA. And on stainless there is no duty advantage at all, so Taiwan has to win purely on quality.

I would rather tell you that now than after you have invested time.