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The Commerce Commission has reached settlements with four sunscreen companies that have admitted misleading consumers about the sun protection offered by their products.
The commission investigated and tested four product ranges after complaints laid by the Cancer Society which said it was misleading under the Fair Trading Act for the products to claim to provide all day protection with just one application of the sunscreen.
In December the commission announced some of the products tested did not meet the claims made, and said it would launch court action if the companies did not immediately sort the problem out.
Since then, the Cancer Society has also been found to have been selling sunscreen that did not offer the protection it claimed.
The four companies: Tanning Research Laboratories, which manufactures Hawaiian Tropic sunscreens; BDM Grange, which imports, promotes and distributes Hawaiian Tropic sunscreens; CSL Biotherapies (NZ), which imports, promotes and distributes Daylong sunscreen (manufactured by Swiss company Spirig Pharma); and Once Trading Co, which imports, distributes and promotes Once sunscreen (manufactured by Canada's Dermatol Inc) have all avoided court action by taking swift action.
The companies all acknowledged that they breached the Fair Trading Act. They agreed to immediately withdraw from sale any products which did not meet the SPF claims made on the labels, ensure any future product labels were accurate, and carry out corrective advertising.
Commission chairwoman Paula Rebstock said she was very pleased the companies had responded in a responsible manner.
"Consumers should not have to find out the hard way, through sunburn and skin damage, that a sunscreen doesn't provide the protection claimed. The onus is on manufacturers and distributors to ensure the claims made on their products about SPF are accurate," she said.
A sunscreen still had to comply with the Fair Trading Act, even if it complied with an overseas sunscreen standard, Ms Rebstock said.
The commission's product testing was carried out at the Australian Photobiology Testing Facility but analysed here in the context of New Zealand sun conditions by Niwa.
Meanwhile, the commission this week asked the Cancer Society to explain what it was going to do about the failed test of its SPF 30+ Trigger Spray sunscreen carried out by Consumers' Institute.
Society chief executive Dalton Kelly said it was "mystified" at how the sunblock failed the test, but would be working with the commission.
The testing which showed that the sunscreen complied with its claims dated back to 2001, and had not been updated since then.
- NZPA
