News

The law suit follows an action by the ACCC in 2007, which resulted in Visy Group being fined $36m. At the time Amcor came out unscathed for its part in the cartel after blowing the whistle on its competitor.

According to media reports the settlement has not yet been disclosed or signed however in a statement to the ASX Amcor said it has “reached an in principle agreement to resolve that claim. A number of terms of the settlement remain to be finalised.”

Despite the agreement to settle, the case will return to the Federal Court in Australia today with a key uncertainty being whether customers of the cartel who “passed through” the price increases to their customers can claim damages.

The final settlement is likely to be significantly lower than the original $500m claim with media reports putting the figure at around $150m.

The latest action seems to be the climax of a string of law suits since the illegal cartel came to light with Amcor and a large customer, Cadbury Schweppes settling legal action relating to the cartel in July 2009.

In June 2008, Richard Pratt the then head of Visy was charged with lying about his knowledge of the price fixing scandal, however these charges were dropped prior to his death in April 2009.

The current action is based on the claim of more than 10,000 customers of Amcor and Visy, many of them SMEs from the food, beverage, publishing and consumer goods industries.