News out of New Zealand this morning is that cartel behaviour in the freight forwarding community has been hit hard by a judgment of more than NZ$9.7 million handed down by the High Court in Auckland against two of the country’s biggest forwarders.
The penalties were issued against Mondiale Freight Service, Oceanbridge Shipping, and four individuals after concerns emerged last year of long-standing ‘arrangements’ between competitors.
Mondiale and Oceanbridge, respectively New Zealand’s leading forwarder and consolidator, were each issued with penalties of NZ$4.9m and NZ$4.6m.
The four individuals found guilty of working in concert with the cartel behaviour received penalties ranging from NZ$65 000 to NZ$100 000.
New Zealand’s Commerce Commission said in a statement issued yesterday that the defendants had breached the country’s Commerce Act by actively seeking to limit competition through persuading other forwarders not to compete for customers.
Mondiale and Oceanbridge were in separate cartels.
The Commission’s chair, Anna Rawlings, said: “These cartel arrangements had the effect of removing competition, making it possible that customers were charged more by counterparties for retail freight forwarding services than they would have been if Oceanbridge and Mondiale had actively competed for those customers.”
By his own admission, Ray Meade, chief executive of Mondiale, said suspicions of uncompetitive behaviour on their part were first brought to their attention in 2018.
In a statement on the company’s website, he said: “We have cooperated with the New Zealand Commerce Commission from the outset. We understand the need to meet all our obligations under the Commerce Act, and we are sorry this did not happen in this case.”
The High Court acknowledged that Mondiale endeavoured to provide a wholesale freight forwarding service, and had ceased its conduct in 2018 when it was first informed of potentially breaching the Commerce Act.
