Plastics firms fined €344.5m

FIVE of Europe’s most powerful plastics companies met in a Dublin hotel room in October 1999 to set the price for plastic moulding compounds.

Yesterday they were fined a total of €344.5 million for price gouging.

Handwritten notes showed they agreed on a price as of January 2000 and choreographed the announcements to be made by different companies in the various countries.

Their actions resulted in the European Commission slapping the fine on the competitors, including Quinn Barlo, for operating an illegal cartel.

This is the fourth largest fine imposed by the competition authorities of the EU. The cartel ended before the Quinn Group’s takeover of Barlo two years ago, so the parent company is not included in the decision.

The companies are French-owned Arkema (formerly Atofina) which was fined €219m, Britain’s ICI (€191.1m), British chemical company Lucite (€25m after a 30% reduction), Barlo (€9m) and Germany’s Degussa (nil).

Arkema and ICI had their fines increased 50% because it was their second offence and Total-owned Arkema had this reduced 40% because of its cooperation.

Degussa received immunity for being first to provide information about the cartel. Otherwise it would have been fined €264.4m.

It showed that the five agreed, fixed and monitored prices for acrylic glass and exchanged commercially important and confidential information between 1997 and 2002.

Two other firms, BASF AG and Repsol YPF, proved they did not break competition rules and escaped fines.

The companies have two months to appeal the fine.