Australia's cardboard king confesses to carton cartel

Australia's third-richest man confessed Tuesday to a consumer watchdog agency that he colluded with a rival to fix the price of cardboard boxes, in a deal reached six years ago over lunch in a Melbourne pub.

Richard Pratt, chairman of Visy Group, said he accepted responsibility for agreeing to illegal behaviour in dealings with rival box-maker Amcor.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) had alleged that Pratt was part of a corrugated-cardboard carton cartel. The agency is now expected to drop charges against Pratt after he agreed to pay a fine estimated to be more than 30 million Australian dollars (24 million US dollars).

Visy is the world's largest privately owned packaging and recycling company. With Amcor, it has a 97-per-cent share of Australia's 2-billion-Australian-dollar cardboard market.

The ACCC investigation was sparked after four employees left Amcor to set up their own cardboard manufacturing business. Amcor sued, claiming they had taken client lists with them. During those court proceedings, Amcor's lawyers said they had chanced upon evidence of the alleged price fixing.

By reporting anti-competitive behaviour to the ACCC, Amcor exempted itself from prosecution.

"I have accepted responsibility for comments made to me by then Amcor CEO Russell Jones when he invited me to lunch," Pratt said in a statement. "Visy executives erred when they had discussions with Amcor."

The rags-to-riches philanthropist insisted that customers did not pay higher prices because of the price fixing.

"We believe that actual market outcomes demonstrate that our behaviour did not disadvantage our customers," he said. dpa sa