European Commission Approves Campina Fonterra Joint Venture

The Commission’s examination showed that the proposed operation would not significantly affect competition as the horizontal overlaps between the parties’ pharmaceutical lactose activities in the EEA would be limited.

05/06/06 The European Commission has cleared under the EU Merger Regulation the proposed joint venture between Campina of The Netherlands and Fonterra of New Zealand, both active in dairy products. Campina and Fonterra will combine their respective pharmaceutical and fine chemical lactose activities. The Commission concluded that the proposed transaction would not significantly impede effective competition in the European Economic Area (“EEA”) or a substantial part of it.

Campina is an international co-operative active in the development, production, sale and distribution of dairy and dairy-related consumer products and advanced ingredients for the food and pharmaceutical industries. Campina’s industrial products group operates on a global scale.

Fonterra is a New Zealand based dairy co-operative principally producing dairy based branded consumer and food products and supplying dairy-based ingredients to the food manufacturing industry and pharmaceutical industry.

Campina and Fonterra would combine their pharmaceutical lactose business, their business of selling edible and pharmaceutical grade lactose for fine chemical manufacture and their excipients business. Excipients are inactive substances used as carriers or diluting agents in active drug formulations. In addition excipients can be used to aid the process by which a product is manufactured.

The Commission’s examination showed that the proposed operation would not significantly affect competition as the horizontal overlaps between the parties’ pharmaceutical lactose activities in the EEA would be limited. The Commission also found that there would be no risk of supply problems on the market concerned, as potential and actual alternative and competing sources of supply exist for all forms of pharmaceutical lactose.