It has long been noted that when it comes to justice (and a fair price) for consumers the wheeels of justice can turn pretty slow and those with deep pockets can no doubt smooth the path towards compromise and delay. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) after an inquiry into the price fixing of dairy products has hit Tresco with a £10m fine.
The supermarket giant was one of nine firms facing penalties totalling close to £50m for colluding over the price of milk and cheese in 2002 and 2003. The OFT found that Arla, Asda, Dairy Crest, McLelland, Safeway, Sainsbury's, The Cheese Company, Wiseman, and Tesco all infringed the Competition Act by co-ordinating rises in the prices consumers paid for certain dairy products in 2002 and, or 2003.
Tesco who have denied collusion with the other companies, say they will appeal have expressed "surprise and dismay" that it was included in the penalties handed down by the regulator. OFT estimates that the collusion (or unhappy coincidence) resulted shoppers paying 2 pence extra for a litre of milk and 2p extra on 100g of cheese.
The final penalties announced by the OFT were £9.39m for Asda, £7.14m for Dairy Crest, £1.66m for McLelland, £5.69m for Safeway, £11.04m for Sainsbury's, £1.26m for The Cheese Company, £3.2m for Wiseman and £10.43m for Tesco. Although Arla was found to been involved in the infringement regarding milk in 2003, it has not been fined as it alerted the OFT to price fixing and was given immunity.
While this does not sound much the regulator initially calculated that £270m extra was spent by UK consumers as a result of the price fixing, but no total figure has been included in the final report. So how much longer will we have to wait for the Con Dem Govenrment to deliever on its pre election promises of brining in a Supermarket Ombudsman?
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