Steel & Tube takes three months to tell market after admitting false and misleading claims

Three months after pleading guilty to 24 charges of making false and misleading claims about its seismic steel mesh, Steel & Tube has just made an announcement to the stock exchange.

In a prepared statement, the company says the charges laid by the Commerce Commission under the Fair Trading Act were only about the testing methodology and not the performance characteristics of its steel mesh.

It admitted in August to making false and misleading representations about its batch tags, batch test certificates, advertising collateral and website that SE62 was 500E grade steel when it was not. 

Interim chief executive Mark Malpass says 12 of the charges related to “inadvertent use of a testing laboratory's logo at the bottom of the test certificate of SE62 mesh.”

Mr Malpass says the company immediately acknowledged its mistake in March last year and removed the logo

The remaining 12 charges relate to the application of testing methodologies in the applicable standard.

Steel & Tube has been co-operating with the commission to reach an appropriate resolution of the charges and has entered guilty pleas to the charges.

Steel & Tube says it takes quality and compliance seriously and, since April last year, the company has had external accredited laboratories testing seismic mesh.

“The company has also taken significant steps to enhance its quality and product assurance systems,” Mr Malpass says.

He says the company can make no further comment.

However, Steel & Tube says there were significant interpretational issues with the standard for testing seismic mesh.

The ambiguities in the standard led to the company calling for a government/industry review of the testing standard and in November last year, a clarification was issued by the Ministry of Business.

“Clarification of the standard gives all seismic mesh manufacturers and sellers certainty regarding how seismic mesh is to be tested to ensure it complies with the standard. It also gives building owners reassurance that all seismic mesh will now be tested in the same way,” Mr Malpass says.