Natal Portland Cement cleared in price-fixing case

South Africa's leading antitrust tribunal has dismissed a price-fixing and market division case against Cimpor-owned Natal Portland Cement (NPC) more than a decade after an investigation was launched. The competition investigation was originally launched in 2008 and included PPC, AfriSam and Lafarge.

The tribunal has come to the conclusion that NPC had not engaged in a price war. "It [NPC] was operating at maximum capacity, which it could not increase, and operated mainly, almost exclusively, in southern KwaZulu-Natal, where the others had only a limited presence and where selling cement at competitive prices was challenging because of the transport costs in doing so," the tribunal said.

The commission granted PPC conditional immunity, while AfriSam and Lafarge settled and paid fines of ZAR128.8m (US$8.8m) and ZARR148.7m, respectively.