Company fined for Made in NZ Commonwealth Games uniforms that were made in China
Published23 Apr 2007
Sports Resources Ltd was fined $23,750 in the Auckland District Court today after pleading guilty to two charges of breaching the Fair Trading Act. Company Director Anthony Botica was also convicted and discharged.
Mr Botica instructed his staff to cut off the words "Made in China," and sew in new "Made in New Zealand" labels onto New Zealand's 2006 Commonwealth Games uniforms. The clothing was actually made in China.
Commerce Commission investigators found the floor littered with "Made in China" labels when they searched Sports Resources' Otara factory in December 2005, after receiving an anonymous tip off.
Thousands of items of official team clothing, including shorts, t-shirts, fleeces and the iconic black singlet, were falsely labelled.
Sports Resources Limited, a leading New Zealand sports clothing manufacturer and distributor, agreed to supply Adidas and the New Zealand Olympic Committee with over 8,000 items of clothing for Games athletes and officials.
"It was a condition of supply that most of the Games clothing - including the iconic black singlet - would be made in New Zealand,' says Deborah Battell, Commerce Commission Director of Fair Trading.
"Sports Resources deliberately relabelled clothing without informing Adidas and the NZOC," says Ms Battell.
"It's hard to think of a more blatantly dishonest act than cutting off the words 'Made in China' and sewing on a new 'Made in New Zealand' label," says Ms Battell.
Ms Battell noted that the company's actions could have disadvantaged competitors who genuinely manufacture in New Zealand.
"NZOC paid a premium to have the garments made in New Zealand. It could well have insisted on another supplier if it had known that Sports Resources would source the garments from overseas."
Over 1,800 falsely labelled garments had been supplied to the NZOC before the Commission intervention. The Commission ensured all the items were re-labelled correctly before clothing was distributed to the Commonwealth Games team.
Background
Images available.
The Commission has images of the garments and labels available for media, in low-resolution format only. See contact details below to obtain images.
Number of garments.
A total of 1861 falsely labelled finished garments had been supplied to the NZOC before the Commission's intervention. That intervention prevented a further 4019 falsely labelled garments being supplied to the NZOC. All garments underwent corrective labelling before being distributed to the Games team.
Search warrant.
Acting on information from a confidential informant, the Commission executed a search warrant at Sports Resources Otara factory on 22 December 2005. Investigators located significant evidence supporting the alleged breaches from the factory floor. The evidence included :
• packaged goods as landed in New Zealand with 'Made in China' labels intact;
• finished goods which had been relabelled with the Adidas label which represented that they were 'Made in New Zealand';
• clothing which had the 'Made in China' portion of the original label cut off;
• hundreds of the cut off 'Made in China' portion of the labels, lying on the factory floor.
Fair Trading Act. Under Section 13(j) of the Fair Trading Act, no person shall, in trade, in connection with supply of goods, make a false or misleading representation concerning the place of origin of goods. The penalties under the Fair Trading Act are fines of $200,000 per offence for companies and up to $60,000 per offence for individuals.
