NDRC says collusion violated China's law
Eight international ro-ro shipping firms were investigated and fined 407 million yuan ($62.8 million) in total by China's National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) for price-fixing, the NDRC announced in a statement posted on its website on Monday.
Ro-ro vessels have built-in ramps that allow cargo to be rolled on and off the ship when in port.
Four Japanese companies were involved, along with one from Norway, one from South Korea and two from Chile.
According to the NDRC's investigation, which lasted more than one year, the eight lines "reached a consensus" that they wouldn't "encroach upon" each other's shipping market in China, in order to maintain or raise the level of their freight.
They also frequently carried out unlawful communications in the form of telephone calls, meetings, and meals at which they would exchange sensitive information, negotiate prices and bidding intentions, as well as agreements to either offer high bids or none at all for shipping business.
According to the NDRC's investigation, this price-fixing activity persisted for at least four years after China's Anti-monopoly Law came into force in 2008.
The NDRC said that this activity affected a number of routes such as those between China and North America, China and Europe, China and South America and in the adjacent seas of China. A number of car companies and mechanical engineering firms were also involved, it said.
The shippers have all apologized for their unlawful behavior, showed a willingness to bear relevant legal liability and proposed a number of rectification measures, the NDRC said.
Those measures include strengthening construction of a system to prevent price collusion.
The eight companies were charged different fines by the NDRC. The Nippon Yusen Kaisha Group (NYK Line Ltd) in Japan was exempted from penalties for providing important evidence. The Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd and the Mitsui OSK Lines Ltd, also based in Japan, were charged relatively low fines of 24 million yuan and 38 million yuan, respectively, also because they assisted the investigation.
South Korea-based Eukor Car Carriers Inc and Norway-based Wallenius Wilhelmsen Logistics Co were fined 284 million yuan and 45 million yuan, respectively, as their transgressions were relatively serious.
The other three companies were each fined about 5 percent of their ro-ro shipping revenues in the Chinese market in 2014.
