Competition record
NKT
Deep profile · 1 linked library matter
NKT is a Danish maker of high-voltage cable used to tie power grids together. The European Commission fined a project-allocation cartel among NKT, Nexans, and Prysmian.
Overview
NKT is the Danish cable company. Its high-voltage business includes the offshore and underground links that connect a grid to a neighbor or to a power source at sea. Laying that cable is a specialized job. The factory, the vessel, and the crew are not interchangeable with ordinary electrical wholesaling.
In the Commission decision, NKT is one of the makers that allocated those projects with Nexans and Prysmian. For a Danish firm, North Sea and Baltic links are home markets. An allocation that hands a project to one supplier and keeps the others out is the whole of the competitive event. There is no shelf price to compare the next day.
Status in the library is fined. No fine figure is stated here, because none is fixed in the notes for this profile. Ratepayers meet NKT only as a line item inside a grid investment.
Competition footprint
Offshore and interconnector projects are the contracts the cartel divided.
NKT's competitive significance is the ability to deliver a high-voltage link, not a commodity reel of building cable.
The same decision names Prysmian and Nexans. The conduct is project allocation among those makers.
Consumer & business angle
A transmission owner that received only complementary bids did not get the price pressure a second serious bidder would have applied.
Coastal and offshore projects concentrate the harm in a few public or regulated buyers.
What to watch
- How grid tenders in northern Europe document independent bidding after the decision.
- Private claims that trace a particular interconnector back to the allocation period.
Markets
high-voltage cable · offshore power links · power cables · grid infrastructure · offshore wind
Also known as: nkt cables, nkt a/s