Case Details

Year Initiated/Committed

2019

Year Resolved

2019

Settlement Amount

n/a

Court

Minnesota District Court for Ramsey County

Docket Number

n/a

Lead State

Participating States

Defendant(s)

Dairy Farmers of America, Inc.; Kemps LLC

Case Description

Minnesota entered into an Assurance of Discontinuance with Dairy Farmers of America to remedy antitrust concerns about DFA’s purchase of a milk-processing plant in Saint Paul that was owned by Agropur, a Quebec based dairy cooperative. Until then, the St. Paul facility and Kemps competed head to head for the business of supplying milk to schools in more than 40 Minnesota school districts, primarily in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul metro area. Kemps, however, is already owned by DFA. The state alleged that: DFA’s acquisition of the St. Paul Facility will adversely affect the markets for the sale of school milk to individual school districts in Minnesota and is likely to substantially lessen competition in the Minnesota school milk market. As part of an Assurance of Discontinuance, beginning in the 2020–21 through the 2029–30 school years, DFA will bid for school milk sales for those districts and programs at a price no higher than the price successfully bid by either Kemp’s or the St. Paul Facility in the 2018–19 school year, adjusted to reflect the current milk industry. According to the state, this will blunt the anticompetitive edge of DFA’s purchase of the St. Paul Facility and make it easier for those districts and programs to buy milk for students at affordable prices.