Steel and Tube has been fined a record $1.885 million for making false claims about its steel mesh products used for earthquake strengthening.
The company was sentenced on Wednesday after admitting 24 charges under the Fair Trading Act.
These related to charge spanning from 2012 to 2016, where Steel and Tube sold 482 batches of approximately 480,000 sheets of steel mesh for $24 million.
The Commerce Commission says Steal and Tube misled the public through the mesh's batch tags, test certificates and through advertising that the mesh met Australian and New Zealand standard, which they did not.
The company also made false and misleading claims that the batches had been independently tested, when they had not.
The total fine of $188.5 million was reduced from $2.9 million due to the company's guilty pleas.
It is the highest fine to date under the Fair Trade Act for a single company.
In his judgement released on Wednesday, Judge Cathcart says "the culpability of Steel and Tube as grossly negligent".
"Senior management ought to have known of the large scale non-compliance over the four-year charging period. The technical manager was not properly supervised. Steel and Tube cannot be permitted to wash their hands of taking responsibility for that negligent oversight," Judge Cathcart says.
"It was Steel and Tube's responsibility to have proper systems in place to ensure compliance with the standard," he says.
Newshub.
