The Ministry of SMEs and Startups conducted its first mandatory investigation and announced the results on the 26th to ensure that the supply price linkage system, fully implemented from 2024, is operated in accordance with the purpose of the system and to check for any illegal activities.
The supply price linkage system adjusts the supply price in accordance with changes in the prices of major materials and supplies when their prices fluctuate beyond a certain level for goods supplied by the entrusted company to the commissioning company.
This investigation began in response to a sharp rise in the price of raw paper, a key material and supplies for cardboard boxes, in the second half of last year, to check whether the rise in raw paper prices is appropriately reflected in the supply prices through the linkage system.
In particular, two industries with high demand for cardboard boxes, including the food manufacturing industry and the mail-order sales industry, were selected for investigation, focusing on the top five companies by sales, totaling 10 commissioning companies.
Through the 'written survey,' four companies suspected of violating the 'Cooperative Cooperation Law' were identified, and an additional 'on-site investigation' was conducted for the implicated companies to secure related materials such as transaction records and agreements. A 'survey' was also concurrently conducted targeting entrusted companies engaged in transactions with investigation targets to confirm illegal activities such as coercing non-linkage agreements to avoid the linkage system.
As a result, three companies were found to have violated the Cooperative Cooperation Law, including two companies that did not issue linkage agreements and one company that failed to issue an agreement, resulting in administrative actions such as 'demands for improvement and corrective orders,' 'penalty points (2 points),' 'imposition of fines,' and 'education orders.'
In examining major violations, B, a subsidiary of A in the mail-order sales industry, continued transactions without issuing a new agreement even after the transaction period expired while manufacturing and entrusting the supply of cardboard boxes.
Meanwhile, the Ministry of SMEs and Startups conducted the '2025 Supply Price Linkage System Survey' to verify the implementation of the linkage system in its early stages, confirming that the linkage agreement signing rate for entrusted companies with mandatory transactions under the linkage system was 56.1%, indicating that the linkage system is gradually taking root in the entrusted transaction market.
To further successfully establish the linkage system, the Ministry plans to reflect the monitoring results of the supply price linkage system and industries vulnerable to unfair trade in its annual investigation plan and expand mandatory investigations with strategies and directionality to conduct them more than twice a year.