Turkey Probes Nestlé, Danone For Price-Fixing

Nestlé and Danone are among four companies under investigation in Turkey for allegedly violating competition laws on sharing pricing information.

Swiss food giant Nestlé, meanwhile, is also being investigated in a separate case under the accusation the company set prices, and also imposed unspecified restrictions for “distributors”, according to notices posted on the website today (5 January) of Rekabet Kurumu, Turkey’s competition authority.

In the first instance, Rekabet Kurumu presented the company names as Danone Tikveşli Food and Beverage Industry, Eti Gıda, Horizon Fast Consumption and Nestle Türkiye Gıda Sanayi.

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A preliminary investigation was concluded in December into whether the four companies violated Article 4 of competition laws into the “exchange of information sensitive to competition”, Rekabet Kurumu noted.

It added that the regulator’s board had “found the findings serious and sufficient” to launch a follow-up investigation into the said firms.

In the separate notice pertaining to Nestlé in Turkey, Rekabet Kurumu has today launched an investigation following another preliminary probe on allegations the company again violated Article 4 “determining the resale price of its distributors and imposing region and customer restrictions on its distributors”.