American Natural Soda Ash Corporation/ Botswana Ash (Pty) Ltd. Case no: 12/CAC/Dec01. This was decided in the Competition Appeal Court of South Africa (‘CAC’) in 2003. The panel members were Jali JA, and Malan AJA, who all concurred with the written judgement of Davis JP.
Facts

The parties are: American Natural Soda Ash Corporation and CHC Global (Pty) Ltd (‘Ansac’) as the first and second appellant respectively, and, the Competition Commission of South Africa, Botswana Ash (PTY) Limited (‘Botash’), Chemserve Technical Products and The Minister of Trade and Industry as the first to fourth respondents respectively. Ansac is an American Corporation formed by five soda ash producers to export soda ash, and CHC Global is Ansac’s local distributor. Botash is a Botswanan distributor of Soda Ash (a competitor to Ansac), and Chemserve is Botash’s South African distributor.
Botash submitted an application for interim relief against Ansac in October 1999, raising the question of whether Ansac’s activities – price-fixing – contravenes the South African Competition Act’s prohibition on restrictive horizontal practices found in section 4 of the Act. This application was later withdrawn when the Commission investigated the complaint, and itself concluded that Ansac was involved in prohibited conduct. The Commission filed its complaint referral in April 2000 and Botash later secured the Tribunal’s leave to serve an intervening complaint against Ansac.
In March 2001, the Competition Tribunal (‘CT’) held that s 4(1)(b) required no display of an anti-competitive effect, and that, unlike s 4(1)(a), s 4(1)(b) permitted no efficiency defence. In a second ruling, the Tribunal further dismissed two exceptions raised by Ansac concerning the scope of the Act’s application as well as Botash’s legal standing.
On appeal, the Competition Appeal Court (CAC) confirmed the decision of the CT.