Overview

• The Bundeskartellamt has prohibited Premium Food Group from acquiring Vion’s German slaughterhouses on grounds of excessive market concentration
• President Andreas Mundt warned the merger would have extended the group’s leadership from pig to cattle slaughter and reduced alternatives for producers and buyers
• The decision is not yet final and Premium Food Group is reviewing the authority’s reasoning while considering a challenge at the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf
• Vion, previously the market leader in South Germany’s cattle slaughter, is exiting the German market, prompting shifts among the remaining processors
• Together with Westfleisch, Premium Food Group controls about 45.1 percent of Germany’s meat market, a share regulators deemed too high for healthy competition