The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has accepted court enforceable undertakings from Sherpa Outdoor Equipment Pty Limited about the labelling of its Sherpa brand thermal underwear garments.
The undertakings address ACCC concerns that in supplying thermal underwear garments with misleading and false fibre content labelling Sherpa Outdoor Equipment Pty Limited may have breached the Trade Practices Act 1974.
"Garment suppliers must ensure their product labelling is accurate and true", ACCC Chairman, Mr Graeme Samuel, said today.
"All companies have a responsibility to ensure that they label their garments with the correct fibre content labelling. For example labelling a garment as 100% Polypropylene means exactly that: the garment must contain 100% Polypropylene."
"On the other hand, if a garment is labelled as Polypropylene it may contain a very small percentage of other fibres, up to five per cent, as is consistent with the relevant Australian Standard".*
Sherpa Outdoor Equipment has undertaken to:
- refrain from supplying mislabelled thermal underwear garments and from supplying these garments in packaging that contains false representations about their fibre content
- engage an accredited textile testing agency to test each and every batch of thermal underwear garments for fibre content prior to making any representations that relate to the fibre content of the garments
- ensure all suppliers it chooses to source thermal underwear garments from are fully aware of the fibre content labelling requirements of the relevant Australian Standard* and the terms of Sherpa's undertaking to the ACCC
- by way of a corrective notice in a major daily newspaper in New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania, notify consumers who have been misled by the fibre content labelling of the thermal underwear garments it has supplied, that it will offer them refunds or replacement goods
- relabel any mislabelled stock and packaging it has in its warehouse and contact those retailers it supplied to assist them to do the same
- implement an upgraded corporate trade practices compliance program with particular emphasis on its labelling practices
* The relevant Australian Standard is the Standard for textiles and fibre content labelling (AS/NZS 26:22 1996). This Standard is not a Mandatory Standard under the Trade Practices Act 1974.