A complaint was logged against Sappi Fine Paper Europe yesterday with the Bundeskartellamt, the German Federal Cartel Office, claiming that the South African group’s European operation restricts the customers that Paperlinx’s German subsidiary can make indent sales to.
Paperlinx claimed that Sappi varies its prices or delivery times dependent on the identity of the end-buyer or refuses to quote entirely if the merchant does not supply the name of the buyer or if a different merchant previously supplied the buyer.
Sappi Europe rejects the allegations as “being entirely unfounded”.
However, Paperlinx claimed that Sappi’s actions in effect mean that it can only supply competitive quotes to ‘approved’ customers and not customers of rival merchants who are also supplied by Sappi.
In its statement Paperlinx said that: “Sappi has effectively assigned customers between paper merchants, ensuring that Paperlinx sells Sappi paper products to only certain customers via indent sales and restricting the freedom of Paperlinx under EU and German competition law to sell to whomever it wishes.
“The complaint also sets out Paperlinx's view that these practices have had, and continue to have, a serious impact on Paperlinx's ability to compete to win new business and to increase its market share, and that these practices are also to the detriment of printers and other customers in the industry.”
In response, a Sappi spokeswoman said: “Paperlinx’s allegations are not new. Sappi had already some time ago carefully analysed the accusations and had and will continue to reject them as being entirely unfounded. Sappi’s commercial practices in Germany, and indeed anywhere else it operates, are in line with the industry’s long established practices of doing business. These trade practices do not infringe competition laws. Sappi is looking forward to co-operating with the German Federal Cartel Office should the latter decide to follow-up Paperlinx’s complaint.”
Paperlinx chief executive Andrew Price said that he couldn’t comment further in the specific allegations against Sappi, however he implied that it could be the first of a number complaints logged against mills over alleged anti-competitive behaviour.
“We don’t think this situation is necessarily isolated to Germany. We’re duty bound to protect our customers’ interests and are looking at other manufacturers and other geographies to ensure that the proper competitive practices are adhered to,” said Price.
Indent sales are sales secured by a paper merchant, but delivered direct to the customer by the mill. In the UK, they typically involves orders in excess of five tonnes places by larger print companies and high-volume end-users such as publishers and direct mail buyers.
PrintWeek understands that indent paper sales represent around 60%-70% of paper volumes in Germany and around 30% of the total volume of graphical paper sales in the UK.
To read the full Paperlinx statement, click here.
