Competition Tribunal approves ETG’s acquisition of Cure-Chem,
subject to increased investment in public interest initiatives
The Competition Tribunal has approved the merger wherein ETG Chem FZE LLC (“ETG”) intends to acquire Cure-Chem South Africa (Pty) Ltd (“Cure-Chem”). Following the implementation of this proposed transaction, Cure-Chem will be a wholly owned subsidiary of ETG.
Conditions
The merger has been approved by the Tribunal, subject to conditions involving the acquiring group increasing its expenditure towards the following existing public interest initiatives:
- Enterprise development i.e. assisting historically disadvantaged persons (“HDPs”) to establish, expand or improve their business;
- Skills development i.e. providing bursaries to HDPs for tuition at local universities and learnerships at Sector Education and Training Authority (“SETA”) accredited institutions;
- Supplier development i.e. procuring from and providing technical support to existing HDP suppliers; and
- Socio-economic development i.e. recruiting, placing and training previously unemployed youth on a production technology learnership programme, leading to a National Qualifications Framework (“NQF”) qualification.
Competition assessment
The Tribunal concurs with the Competition Commission’s finding that the proposed transaction is unlikely to substantially prevent or lessen competition in any relevant market in South Africa, as Cure-Chem is not involved in the supply of agricultural products, commodity trading, manufacturing, or granular distribution, in which ETG is active. In addition, the merger parties are not active at the different levels of the value chain and neither of the raw chemicals imported by Cure-Chem are used in the blending of granular fertilizer.
Public interest
The proposed transaction does not raise any significant employment concerns or any concerns in relation to the industrial sector. To remedy concerns raised in regard to HDP ownership, the merger parties committed to increasing their investment in the abovementioned public interest initiatives.
The merger parties
The acquiring group is active in the markets for the supply of agricultural products and commodity trading as well as the market for the manufacturing and distribution of granular fertilizer and liquid fertilizer in South Africa. It also blends various inputs to manufacture liquid and granular fertilizer.
Cure-Chem is an importer and distributor of raw chemicals that are supplied as inputs for the manufacture of detergents and paint.
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