CMA fines concrete cartel £36m for pushing up prices for seven years
A concrete cartel must pay a £36m fine for breaking competition law for almost seven years.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has ordered three firms to cough up after fixing prices between July 2006 to March 2013.
They also shared the market by allocating customers and exchanging competitively sensitive information, the watchdog said.
Their ploy to push up prices also involved meetings that senior executives attended, according to the CMA.
Northern Ireland’s FP McCann must pay £25.5m, Derbyshire’s Stanton Bonna Concrete must pay £7m and Somerset-based CPM Group faces a £4m fine.
The latter pair received reduced fines after admitting they broke competition law.
The trio led the market in supplying drainage pipes and other pre-cast concrete products to infrastructure projects run by construction and engineering firms, as well as by the government and councils.
“These companies entered into illegal arrangements where they secretly shared out the market for important building products and agreed to keep prices artificially high,” CMA chief executive Andrea Coscelli said.
“This is totally unacceptable as it cheats customers out of getting a good deal.
Coscelli added: “The CMA will not hesitate to issue appropriately large fines in these cases and we will continue to crack down on cartels in the construction sector and in other industries.”
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