Wholesalers of plant protection products fined for anti-competitive agreements on price lists, discounts and individual prices

The Bundeskartellamt has imposed fines totalling 154.6 million euros on seven wholesalers of plant protection products and their responsible employees for agreeing on price lists, discounts and some individual sales prices to retailers and end customers in Germany. The companies fined were AGRAVIS Raiffeisen AG, Hanover/Münster, AGRO Agrargroßhandel GmbH & Co. KG, Holdorf, BayWa AG, Munich, BSL Betriebsmittel Service Logistik GmbH & Co. KG, Kiel, Getreide AG, Hamburg, Raiffeisen Waren GmbH, Kassel and ZG Raiffeisen eG, Karlsruhe. Ulm-based Beiselen GmbH was the first company to cooperate with the Bundeskartellamt and thus exempt from a fine in line with the Bundeskartellamt’s leniency programme. The investigations against two further companies are ongoing. Proceedings against three further companies and two associations have been discontinued.

Andreas Mundt, President of the Bundeskartellamt: “Our investigations have shown that the companies agreed on price lists for plant protection products in the spring and autumn of each year between 1998 and the dawn raid in March 2015. Their agreements were based on a joint calculation by the wholesalers that led to largely uniform price lists for retailers and end customers. Especially during the first few years, some companies simply used the agreed price list to set their own prices and basically just added their respective company logo to the final list.”

When they started the cartel, the companies met several times a year to agree on (discountable gross) list prices. In the later years, they mostly agreed on the prices in writing or by phone. The four leading wholesalers in the market, two of which were cooperatives and two were private-owned companies, generally coordinated the calculation of these prices first. Afterwards, further coordination took place among two groups of wholesalers: the cooperatives on the one hand and non-cooperatives on the other. The results of their coordination, i.e. the calculation schemes and the final (discountable gross) price lists, were then made available to all the companies in the spring and autumn seasons of each year. All wholesalers concerned except Getreide AG had also agreed on discount margins and net net prices (sales prices to retailers without further discounts) for key products until 2008 (the cooperatives even until 2012 and Raiffeisen Waren GmbH until the end of 2011).

The Bundeskartellamt’s dawn raid on 3 March 2015 terminated the anti-competitive practices before the beginning of the 2015 spring season.

All the wholesalers concerned cooperated with the Bundeskartellamt during the proceeding and contributed to the clarification of the matter by applying for leniency. Six of the companies specified above and the individual employees fined have acknowledged the facts as established by the Bundeskartellamt and agreed to a settlement. This was taken into account by the Bundeskartellamt when calculating the fines.

The fining decisions are not yet final The fines can still be appealed to the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court.

A case summary (in German) in accordance with Section 53(5) of the German Competition Act (GWB) will be published on the Bundeskartellamt's website.