Nordzucker

Nordzucker processes sugar beet into sugar. The name points at northern Germany, and the customers that matter in the cartel are industrial buyers: confectioners, drink makers, and other food factories that take sugar in bulk rather than a bag off a supermarket shelf.

The Commission fined Nordzucker together with Südzucker and Pfeifer & Langen. These are three real German sugar companies, not brands of one group. Beet processing is local because beet is heavy and does not travel far before it is refined, so the plants and the customer relationships sit in regions. Coordination among the processors is coordination over who supplies those factories.

The library status is fined. This profile gives no euro figure for Nordzucker and no figure for the case. A food manufacturer that lost the ability to play one processor against another is the direct customer.

Beet sugar for industrial use is the market, distinct from a retail bag with a consumer brand on it.

Northern German processing is Nordzucker's home base inside a cartel of German producers.

The other named producers are Südzucker and Pfeifer & Langen, each a separate company.

A chocolate or soft-drink plant buys sugar on a contract. If the processors have stopped competing for that contract, the plant's ingredient cost moves.

Grocery prices further down the chain are where shoppers would meet the overcharge, diluted across many ingredients.