Brussels, 20/12/2001 (Agence Europe) - As reported in brief yesterday, the Commission has imposed fines totalling EUR 313.7 million on a cartel of ten European companies in the carbonless paper industry. The individual fines are as follows (in EUR million): Arjo Wiggins Appletone Plc (UK, 184.27); Papierfabriek August Koehler AG (Germany, 33.07 million); Zanders Feinpapiere AG (Germany, 29.76 million); Bolloré SA (France, 22.68 million); Mitsubishi HiTech Paper Bielefeld GbmH (Germany, 21.24); Torraspaper SA (Spain, 14.17); Papeteries Mougeot SA (France, 3.64); Distribuidora Vizcaina de Papeles SL (Spain, 1.75), Carrs Paper Ltd (UK, 1.57) and Papelera Guipuzcoana de Zicuñaga SA (Spain, 1.54). The South African company Sappi was granted total immunity under the Commission's 1996 leniency rules as it was the first company to cooperate in the investigation and supplied decisive evidence to the Commission. This is the second time that the Commission has granted a 100% reduction in a fine (following Aventis SA in the vitamins A and E case).
After a detailed investigation launched in 1996, the Commission discovered the existence of a Europe-wide cartel between 1992 and 1995, designed essentially to implement concerted price increases according to a timetable agreed among the companies concerned. As the main instigator of the cartel and also Europe's largest manufacturer of carbonless paper (holding a 32% market share), Arjo Wiggins has received the biggest fine. The Commission has highlighted the seriousness of the price-fixing. Carbonless paper (aka self-copying paper) is intended for the multiple duplication of documents and is made from a paper base to which layers of chemicals are applied. There is a huge market for it in Europe. In 1995 alone, the carbonless paper market in European Economic Area was worth EUR 850 million, or 1 billion tonnes of paper. The ten companies now have three months to pay their finds. Commissioner Monti said that the new case, following hot on the heels of a string of other cartel decisions in 2001, ''shows two things: first that these secret practices are - unfortunately - widespread, but also that the Commission has given itself the wherewithal to detect and pursue such offences and impose effective penalties".