Chile’s National Economic Prosecutor’s Office (FNE) has asked Chile’s Tribunal de Defensa de la Libre Competencia (TDLC) to issue the maximum penalty to three of the four companies, which would equate to US $70 million.
The companies, which provide 100 percent of Chile's salmonid aquafeeds, have been accused of fixing the prices and volumes of feed supplied to their customers as well as agreeing the prices of some of the raw materials used in feed formulations.
Ewos is likely to escape the fines having acted as a whistle-blower - the company's anti-competitive practices were reported by Cargill after buying the firm from Altor and Bain Capital in 2015.
"We were informed of practices throughout the salmon feed industry in Chile that were inconsistent with Cargill's competition policy and possibly violated Chile's competition law. For this reason we started an investigation, the results of which we made available to the FNE in January 2016," said Cargill in a statement.
