Customer Notice

Sea Swift Pty Ltd

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is concerned about actions taken by Sea Swift Pty Ltd (Sea Swift). These occurred when we made contracts with our larger customers to provide scheduled general cargo freight services by sea (also known as general cargo services).

The ACCC is concerned that we engaged in exclusive dealing and misuse of market power conduct, because:

• many of our contracts with larger customers have an exclusivity clause. These clauses say we will only supply those customers if the customer agrees to not buy sea freight services from any other provider (except in limited circumstances);
• the way the end dates of our exclusive contracts were staggered, so they finished at different times over several years, may have affected competition; and
• we required certain customers to give us the chance to match another supplier’s quote.

Exclusive dealing and misuse of market power conduct is against the law when it has the purpose, effect or likely effect of substantially lessening competition in a market in Australia. It limits suppliers competing on price and service quality. It can also lead to customers paying more, receiving lower quality service and having less choice.

To address the ACCC’s concerns, Sea Swift has acknowledged the ACCC’s concerns and provided a court enforceable undertaking to the ACCC, see https://www.accc.gov.au/public-registers/undertakings-registers/sea-swift-pty-ltd.

As part of the undertaking, Sea Swift agreed, for the duration of the undertaking, to:

• not enforce or rely on any existing exclusivity clauses for sea freight services or right of first refusal clauses;
• not include exclusivity clauses in future contracts;
• not include first right of refusal clauses in future contracts; and
• update our template contract to limit the initial supply term to 2 years, subject to some exceptions.

This means that:

• we will not rely on any clauses in a customer’s contract requiring that a customer use us exclusively for sea freight services or allow us to match a quote from another supplier;
• customers may engage any freight supplier of their choosing; and
• customers have full flexibility to make freight arrangements that best suit their needs.

The undertaking has not changed our standard terms and conditions for customers on schedule rate cards.

Please contact us if you have any questions.