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Business
Jun 25, 2021 02:13 AM 3 minutes to read
The Auckland District Court has sentenced Euro Corporation to 14 counts of its steel mesh products. image / 123rf
One company has been fined $361,000 for making false, misleading and baseless claims about its seismic steel mesh products.
The steel mesh Euro Corporation Limited (Euro), known as SE615, was the target of a Trade Commission prosecution under the Fair Trade Act.
The company has pleaded guilty to making false, misleading and unsubstantiated claims for the SE615, which was marketed and sold as seismic grade steel grating between January 2012 and August 2015.
Auckland District Court judge ME Sharp has sentenced the company to €14 on charges and a $361,000 fine.
It was the latest company to be sentenced after a series of steel network investigations by the Commerce Commission in 2015 and 2016. Others to face a lawsuit include Steel and Tube Limited, Brilliance Steel Limited, Timber King Limited and NZ Steel Distributor Limited.
Euro manufactured SE615 steel grille in New Zealand and imported it from abroad.
The Trade Commission said in a statement today that the company, however, failed to comply with the testing procedures set forth in the Australian/New Zealand Standard for Steel Reinforcement when testing locally made steel.
The fees relate to about 137,900 sheets of SE615 manufactured locally and 104,900 imported sheets.
In her ruling, Judge Sharp said: “Standards are solutions that are issued in order to make buildings, among other things, safe. Failure to comply with them can cause significant harm to the consumer audience, especially when leaving is such as to make the use of the product unsafe.
“The committee is right in suggesting that, given that we are dealing here with an earthquake safety product, compliance is critical and the deterrent response is appropriate.”
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Trade Commission Chair Anna Rawlings said the standards are set to give the public confidence that buildings in New Zealand are constructed with materials that meet specified requirements.
“Consumers have no choice but to trust and rely on representations made by companies about compliance with the standards, at least in part because they cannot verify the performance characteristics of building materials themselves. It is crucial to adhere to the applicable standards and correctly describe them to consumers.”
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