At the end of June, the Competition Council (KP) made the decision to permit Estonian investment company Dragad OÜ to join Estonia-based holding Maral Invest OÜ, as confirmed by KP representative Zane Gorškova.
She said that after this merge Dragad OÜ will cease to exist and will be excluded from the Commercial Register of Estonia.
KP did not notice any significant risks for competition and decided to permit the deal.
Maral Invest OÜ is a holding and its group companies JSC Latvijas Maiznieks, UAB Lietuvos kepėjas and Eesti Pagar JSC produce and sell bread, various bread products and pastries in fresh, thawed and frozen form.
Dragad OÜ is an Estonia-based investment company. Cristella VT OÜ, which is part of this company, is engaged in the production of various types of frozen pastries, mainly frozen cakes, sweet sandwiches, pies, croissants, as well as on order products.
The merge will affect vertically linked markets –
the market for the production and supply of frozen pastries and the wholesale market for frozen pastries.
After evaluating information provided by companies and the information already available to KP, it was concluded that the merge would not affect the market structure by much,
competition would not go down and no monopoly on Latvian markets would form. This is why the deal was permitted.
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