Two of Japan’s biggest shipping lines — Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK) and Mitsui OSK Lines (MOL) — have agreed to pay £54m ($72.25m) to settle the long-running UK collective action over the car carrier cartel, drawing a line under a saga that stretches back a quarter of a century.
The proposed settlement, announced in London on Thursday, will go before the UK’s Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) in mid-January. If approved, it takes total recoveries to £92.75m following earlier deals with Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha (K Line), WWL/Eukor and CSAV.
The case, launched five years ago by consumer advocate Mark McLaren, targeted a price-fixing cartel that affected shipments of 17m new cars and vans imported into the UK between 2006 and 2015 for brands including Ford, Toyota, BMW, Renault, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan and Volkswagen. The action followed EU findings that the car-carrier majors had colluded for years on prices, capacity and customer allocation — behaviour stretching back into the late 1990s.
The settlement follows a nine-week trial against NYK and MOL earlier this year. McLaren said the outcome proves the value of the UK’s still-new opt-out regime in enabling consumers and businesses to recover losses they could not realistically pursue alone.
The vessel operators involved have faced regulatory scrutiny worldwide for more than a decade, but the UK class action has now brought the final commercial reckoning. If approved by the CAT on January 16, distribution of damages to millions of UK vehicle buyers and lessees will begin later in 2026 — closing the book on one of the shipping industry’s longest-running competition scandals.
