An Australian skincare company has admitted that its claims about the sun protection factor in two of its sunscreens were false.
Ego Pharmaceuticals has pleaded guilty to two charges under the Fair Trading Act (FTA), for making unsubstantiated claims on two sunscreens.
The Commerce Commission had opened an investigation following a Consumer NZ complaint about Ego Sunsense Sensitive Invisible SPF50+ and Ego Sunsense Ultra SPF50+, which said that these products failed to provide the very high protection claimed.
Commerce Commission general manager of Fair Trading, Vanessa Horne, said Ego accepted that between February 2019 and June 2020 it did not have a reasonable basis to make the SPF claims made on the sunscreen products.
"We opened an investigation into Ego following Consumer NZ's testing in 2019 and a subsequent complaint filed with the Commission.
"In 2019 and 2020 Ego represented that both products provided 'very high' protection for consumers and were 'SPF50+' in accordance with an Australian and New Zealand Standard for sunscreen products.
"While it had reasonable grounds for those claims when the products were first released in New Zealand, the accumulation of test results between 2017 and 2019 meant that from February 2019 Ego ceased to have reasonable grounds to make those claims."
Ego Sunsense Sensitive Invisible SPF 50+ was issued a withdrawal notice by Ego Pharmaceuticals in 2020. Photo / Life Pharmacy
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