On 24 May 2017 Potters Industries LLC, Malvern (USA) and Sovitec Mondial S.A., Fleurus (Belgium) withdrew the notification of their planned merger.  In its merger control proceedings the Bundeskartellamt had sent a draft decision to the parties on 11 May 2017 informing them of its competition concerns about the merger.

Potters Industries and Sovitec Mondial are leading manufacturers of solid glass microspheres. These glass beads, mainly made from recycled glass, are used as retroreflective microspheres for road and ground marking, as abrasives for surface treatment and as additives in the plastic processing industry.

The results of preliminary market investigations have shown that the merger would have led to the emergence of by far the leading and possibly dominant supplier of solid glass microspheres in the European Economic Area (EEA). The merged company would have had a market share of approx. 60 per cent. Not least due to their range of comparable products, Potters and Sovitec currently exert particularly strong competitive pressure on each other. As this would no longer have been the case, the merger was expected to significantly impede effective competition in the markets affected.

Andreas Mundt, President of Bundeskartellamt: "The tiny glass beads produced by the two companies are used in many different applications. The merger would have deprived customers of important alternative suppliers in all areas of application. In addition, the other competitors in the market are already operating at full capacity. The merger would also have had negative effects in Germany in particular due to the strong demand of companies here for the products concerned."

Further information about the case is available in the case summary of 31 May, 2017 (in German only) on the Bundeskartellamt’s website.