Pre-acquisition, ABS Carriers and Supa Shavings were the largest suppliers of bulk wood shavings in the region with a combined market share of at least 70-80%.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe companies were each other\u2019s closest competitors and, when those assets were acquired, that competition was eliminated,\u201d Small said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe commission was not notified about the acquisition, so this case is an important reminder that while our clearance regime is voluntary, we can take action against mergers or acquisitions where clearance was not sought.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her judgement, Justice Dani Gardiner said Alderson and Supa Shavings (2022) accepted that they gained commercially from the acquisitions for around 13 months, until a shavings supply shock in June 2023 affected their profitability from that date.<\/p>\n
The companies also accepted that, up until around November 2024, other suppliers in the same markets supplied on an ad hoc basis only, had small market share and did not constrain Alderson and Supa Shavings (2022) in those markets – \u201cincluding from increasing prices above competitive levels.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gardiner said the companies could not point to their lack of profitability to establish that they had not gained from the acquisitions without undertaking an analysis of what their profit would have been if had they had not occurred and competition continued.<\/p>\n
Small said its vital businesses understand their obligations under the Commerce Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cBusinesses should also give due consideration to whether a transaction ought to be flagged with the commission.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pre-acquisition, ABS Carriers and Supa Shavings were the largest suppliers of bulk wood shavings in the region with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6450,146538,173163,16660,107439,95,60783,1558,138,7520,2371,1656,4596,6130,19631,305,16484,173164,541,17382,111,139,36692,69,19719,1523,23941,173162,168643,173161,1361],"class_list":["post-320152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-6450","tag-146538","tag-420k","tag-acquisitions","tag-alderson","tag-and","tag-associated","tag-been","tag-business","tag-commerce","tag-commission","tag-company","tag-competition","tag-failing","tag-fined","tag-have","tag-illegal","tag-lessened","tag-limited","tag-logistics","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-notify","tag-nz","tag-ordered","tag-over","tag-penalty","tag-shavings","tag-substantially","tag-supa","tag-that"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}