False-labels warning as moire clothes seized

Press, 16 August 1988, Page 34

False-labels warning as moire clothes seized

PA Wellington Clohes’ buyers have been warned to watch out for false labels as cheap overseas imports flood New Zealand. The Customs Department said it had seized a shipment of clothes from Fiji that arrived in Auckland with “Made in New Zealand” labels.

It is also investigating two other cases of wrongly labelled clothes in Fiji shipments. The department’s Tariff Division assistant director, Ms Diane Wilson, said she expected to know the results of those investigations soon.

The Farmers Trading Company was recently fined $26,000 after pleading guilty in the District Court at Auckland to selling Chinese-made children’s clothes labelled “Made in New Zealand.” The Consumers’ Institute assistant director, Mr David Russell, said that with import numbers increasing, the problem “will inevitably get worse.”

The public had to be “vigilant” and report any cases to the institute, the

Commerce Commission or the Consumer Affairs Department, he said. Mislabelling sometimes happened innocently because of unfamiliarity with labelling or the regulations, he said. In the Farmers’ case, the Court was told that the Chinese manufacturer bad made a mistake in copying the Farmers’ Wyndham label and failing to replace the “Made in New Zealand” with “Made in China.” Farmers’ staff had not noticed the mistake. The Judge said he was satisfied that there was no fraudulent intent on Farmers’ part and that the company had done its utmost to ensure there was not a repeat performance.

Mr Russell said there were also cases where labels were deliberately changed because people perceived some advantage in New Zealand-made goods. Times were hard, and as times got harder people would be looking for short cuts to maintain profitability. Mr Russell said the in-

stitute was investigating a case where a woman bought a pair of shoes labelled on the sole as “Made in New Zealand.” While washing the shoes, the woman found a “Made in Korea” label. He said the company involved was arguing that the sole was made in New Zealand and only theuppers were made overseas. The institute maintained that was “quite misleading” and the shoe should have been clearly labelled, “Sole made in New Zealand and upper made in Korea.”

He did not believe the present controls were adequate. Some companies worked just within the law and needed to be better controlled. Ms Wilson said she did not know if the problem was becoming worse or had just become more noticeable.

The department had introduced a new policy to check every import valued at more than $2OOO. But it had no control on what happened to the goods once they were in New Zealand.