Reuters news agency said May 25 that the European Union’s antitrust authorities had raided the offices of Finland’s UPM-Kymmene, the world’s top magazine paper maker, Norwegian Norske Skog, the world’s second largest newsprint maker and Finnish fine paper maker M-real. The investigations by EU and local watchdogs concerned alleged antitrust activities.

Stora Enso also reported that European Commission competition investigators had “visited” its offices in London, Stockholm and Dussledorf, paralleled by visits from local authorities in Fin-land. Stora Enso also received a subpoena for documents from the Antitrust division of the US department of Justice. Labelmaker Avery Dennison said its Dutch and German offices were visited.

UPM said in a statement, and repeated by Reuters, it had alerted competition authorities in the EU, the US and Canada on January 15 after an internal investigation. UPM said the EU, several of its member states and Canada had granted it full immunity “with respect to certain conduct disclosed to the authorities”, conditional on the company’s full cooperation, but did not say in which areas it was being investigated.

There are allegations about price fixing of recycled paper and adhesive label stock in reports about the raids. PI

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