Tetra Laval, Tetra Pak's holding company, is to appeal against the European Commission's decision to impose a €90,000 fine on it for alleged failure to provide information in the long-running EC investigation of its acquisition of French manufacturer of PET bottle production machines, Sidel.
The acquisition was the subject of two Commission decisions and detailed scrutiny by the European Court of First Instance before eventually being approved by the Commission in January 2003.
Tetra Laval senior vice-president, communications Jörgen Haglind says the Commission is claiming the company failed to notify it sufficiently early of its ongoing development of a new technology, Tetra Fast, which attempts to use combustion technology in place of compressed air to form PET bottles.
“The technology is still in development phase”, he said “and the Commission has shown a manifest misunderstanding of both its features and potential. We do not believe the Commission has any grounds to impose a fine”.