Pioneer hopes for settlement

Cape Town - Pioneer Food Group [JSE:PFG] is hoping to reach a settlement within the next three weeks with the competition authorities regarding its involvement in the alleged collusion in the milling industry.

The company has agreed to settle the matter within the coming three weeks, said the recently appointed Pioneer Foods chairperson KK Combi at Friday's annual general meeting of the PSG Group [JSE:PSG].

The two parties intend to settle as soon as possible.

Pioneer recently provided for a R350m fine.

Combi explained that it was up to the competition authorities to either accept or reject the R350m. An official offer had not been made to them yet.

Antonie Jacobs, chief executive of Zeder Investments [JSE:ZED], which owns a stake in Pioneer through Kaap Agri, said this had been one of the issues impacting Zeder’s results in the past financial year.

The company’s headline earnings per share were 31% down.

A contributory factor was that Zeder had had to provide R44m for its share of the fine.

- Sake24.com

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