‘This is not our product’ — Lucky Star hits back at allegations of counterfeit pilchards with tampered expiration dates packed in Woolworths-branded cartons.
Lucky Star company set the record straight after its brand was implicated in a pilchard forgery scandal following a police raid in Gauteng that uncovered counterfeit pilchards with tampered expiration dates packed in Woolworths-branded cartons.
Last week, South African Police Service (SAPS) raided a facility in Gauteng, resulting in the arrest of seven illegal immigrants aged between 18 and 29 years for tampering with expiration dates on pilchards, sparking a probe into counterfeit operations. The raid uncovered alleged counterfeit Lucky Star pilchards and printing equipment used to alter expiration dates that workers had relabelled expired pilchards from 2021/22 with fake 2026 dates and repacked them in Woolworths-labelled cartons.
The suspects are now facing charges of safety violations, theft and immigration offences.
Lucky Star’s response
Lucky Star released a statement on Tuesday, 19 November 2024 to note that its “investigators and third-party experts have categorically confirmed this is not our product. The labels are counterfeit and we do not use ring-pull lids on our canned pilchards.
“So far investigations have established that an international manufacturer produced the canned pilchards under the Woolworths brand. The retailer imported and received…
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