South African Antitrust Body Seeks to Revoke Premier-RFG Deal

South Africa’s antitrust commission moved to revoke the approval of a merger between two of the nation’s biggest packaged food producers, saying they withheld key information about post-deal plans to shutter a fruit-canning plant.

The Competition Commission filed an application with the Competition Tribunal yesterday, seeking the revocation of the latter panel’s conditional consent for Premier Group Ltd.’s acquisition of smaller rival RFG Holdings Ltd. in March, it said in a statement on Wednesday.

The commission said this is the first time it has applied for a revocation since South Africa overhauled its antitrust law in 2019.

Under South African antitrust law, the commission probes the competition and public-interest effects of mergers and can itself decide on small and intermediate ones. In the case of large transactions such as that between Premier and RFG, it investigates and then makes recommendations to the tribunal, which makes the ultimate decision.

In July, Premier informed the commission that it intended to close RFG’s fruit-canning facility in Tulbagh in the Western Cape province, one of two such plants in the country. The factory provides a route to market for about 200 farmers in the region, employs more than 400 people on permanent and fixed terms, and affects “thousands of seasonal workers across the broader agricultural value chain,” the body said.

Premier and RFG “failed to disclose information about the contemplated closure to the commission and the tribunal, despite the parties having known of and discussed the option to do so before the tribunal approved the merger,” the commission said. “The non-disclosure denied the parties “an opportunity to assess and address the closure’s competition and public-interest implications before approving” it.

Complaints from parties including the South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union about the closure alerted the commission to the breach.

The companies first announced the deal in October last year, with the transaction valuing RFG at about 5.78 billion rand ($347 million) at the time, according to Bloomberg calculations.

Premier didn’t immediately respond to a call or email seeking comment.

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