By Atuna
The National Association of Spanish Canners (ANFACO) has been fined with Euro 100.000 by the national Spanish Competition Authority for recommending a joint price rise between their associated canneries for the cans in 2008. ANFACO recommended the higher price as a compensation of the rising steel prices, a development that is repeated now again in the world wide commodity markets.
According to the Spanish Commission for National Competition (CNC), investigations started in December of 2008 proved that ANFACO and the associated companies where coordinating a joint action to transfer the burden of the price rise on to the consumers through higher prices for the cans. This is against the main principles of the Spanish laws on defending free market competition.
ANFACO denies any wrongdoing. In a short statement, written in formal but relatively strong language, the association says it is ‘surprised’ by the CNC decision and that it will make an administrative appeal against it at the Central Court in Madrid. According to ANFACO the fine is completely inappropriate, because the CNC concluded in their statement that they didn’t find any ‘homogeneity in the way the associated canneries acted as a result of the recommendation’ of ANFACO. ANFACO also recalls the words of CNC in which they state that the wrong conduct was only exposed in a very limited moment and that the fine was only imposed in a precautionary way to frighten others to do the same thing. According to ANFACO’s secretary-general Juan Manuel Vieites this could be compared to ‘putting a bandage before the injury’.
Knowing its international reputation in certain circles of the industry as being an organization of powerful players in the world tuna market, ANFACO especially dislikes the fact that it is being sanctioned for oligopolist behavior on his home market. The reason that the CNC started an investigation on ANFACO, was that it published two press releases in November 2008 where it asked its associated companies to show a ‘joint reaction on the higher prices for metal cans’. According to ANFACO, the statement was necessary to let the public know that some kind of price rise was be justified.