UK: The Competition Commission has provisionally found that the UK's three major cement producers are failing to compete on price.
The UK regulator said there were serious problems in the way that the cement market operates in the UK, with customers facing higher prices because the producers know too much about each other's businesses. It estimated that this behaviour could have cost consumers around Euro212m between 2007 and 2011, adding that it was looking at a wide range of remedies to increase competition.
"Strikingly, despite low demand for cement over recent years, prices and profitability for the British producers have still increased," said Commission deputy chairman Martin Cave. He added that Lafarge Tarmac, Cemex and Hanson have concentrated on retaining their respective market shares rather than competing to the full.
The watchdog said that there was no explicit collusion between the firms. Instead there have been conditions that allow them to coordinate their behaviour, including established information channels such as price announcement letters, copy-cat behaviour and cross-sales.
"Given the extent of the problems we have found, we feel that hard-hitting measures may be necessary to open up the cement market to greater competition by transforming existing structures and behaviour," said Cave. Possible remedies could include requiring the firms to divest of cement plants as well as prohibiting generalised price announcement letters.
The UK cement industry consists of four companies: Lafarge Tarmac, Cemex and Hanson, a subsidiary of HeidelbergCement. The fourth company, Hope Construction Materials, was established in January 2013 as a result of the one of the Competition Commission's requirements for the creation of a joint-venture between Lafarge and Anglo American (Tarmac) in 2012. It led to the Euro353m sale of plants and quarries to steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal's investment vehicle, including one of the UK's largest cement plants in Hope, Derbyshire.
