European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Fighting cartels - Commission sanctions retail food packaging cartel and sends Statement of Objections in suspected car battery recycling cartel

European Commission - PRESS RELEASES - Press release - Fighting cartels - Commission sanctions retail food packaging cartel and sends Statement of Objections in suspected car battery recycling cartel: "Today we have sent statements of objections to five companies that we suspect of having operated a cartel in the market for recycling lead from used car batteries.
The statements of objections allege that, from 2009 to 2012, these five companies agreed on prices for scrap lead-acid batteries in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.
Unlike in most cartels where companies usually conspire to increase their sales prices, the companies in this case appear to have colluded to reduce their purchase prices.
This may seem like desirable outcome, as the companies' purpose was to cut input prices and to reduce price volatility. However, the preliminary conclusion of our investigation is that the main goal of the cartel members was in fact simply to maintain higher profit margins. The cartel members may have lowered the prices paid to scrap dealers, many of which are small and medium-sized companies. This would then feed through in lower prices for used batteries sold for scrap, ultimately to the detriment of sellers.
The result, the Commission alleges, was the same as in any price-fixing cartel: disrupting the normal functioning of the market and preventing competition on price.
Artificially fixing the price of lead from recycled batteries, as the Commission suspects, is a very serious matter because it interferes with the effective functioning of the recycling market.
Around 80% of lead scrap comes from waste lead-acid car batteries and practically all car batteries undergo recycling at their end of life. Recycling companies process the batteries in various steps to produce pure lead or lead alloys, most of which is used for making new car batteries.
The concept of the ‘circular economy’ refers to re-using, repairing, refurbishing and recycling existing materials and products. Car battery recycling essentially functions in a closed-loop cycle but the behaviour of these companies would interfere with this loop and affect the circular economy.
If the existence of the cartel were to be confirmed, putting an end to such price fixing would make the market for recycling lead from car batteries more efficient.
The parties now have the opportunity to reply to the Commission's allegations in the statement of objections.""



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