Competition record
Eco-Bat
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
Eco-Bat recycles lead from scrap car batteries. The European Commission fined the scrap-purchase cartel in February 2017, and the library records Eco-Bat as fined.
Overview
Eco-Bat is a lead recycler. It buys used lead-acid batteries from collectors and garages, smelts the lead, and sells the metal back to battery makers. The purchase price it posts is the income of the small business that hauled the scrap in.
The cartel fixed those purchase prices. Recyclers coordinated how much they would pay for scrap batteries in a multi-country European trade, instead of bidding against each other for the scrap. In February 2017 the Commission fined the arrangement about €68 million. Eco-Bat is on the fined side of the library file, with Campine.
Johnson Controls received full leniency immunity for revealing the cartel. That immunity is not Eco-Bat's. The case status is fined because the participating recyclers who did not have immunity were fined.
Competition footprint
A depressed purchase price harms the scrap seller, not the retail battery buyer.
About €68 million is the decision total, not an Eco-Bat-only figure stated here.
The firm that disclosed the cartel, and received immunity, was Johnson Controls.
Consumer & business angle
Garages and independent collectors were paid less for batteries they had already recovered.
Battery makers buying recycled lead were downstream of the smelters that fixed the scrap price.
What to watch
- Collector claims for the underpayment on scrap batteries.
- The Johnson Controls profile, which is the immunity applicant in this same decision.
Markets
lead recycling · battery scrap · battery recycling · scrap collection · circular economy · SME victims of cartels
Also known as: eco bat, eco-bat technologies