MBIE has started cracking down on coffee measurement labelling, reinforcing the fact that that identifying cups by ounces rather than millilitres is, in fact, illegal. Trading Standards, part of the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, contacted the New Zealand Specialty Coffee Association with their concerns. Trading Standards received a complaint from a consumer and were obliged to look into the matter.
Manufacturers who sell goods by weight measure or number have to label their products correctly under the Weights and Measures Act 1987. The Act specifies that goods sold by weight, measure or number must have their quantity marked or labelled using one of the units of the metric system. Despite being an almost universal measurement unit for coffee, an ounce is an imperial unit and therefore doesn’t qualify under New Zealand law.
“Our initial investigation revealed that the complaint was justified and not isolated to one trader, therefore advice was issued industry wide,” explained Davis White, senior trading standards officer at the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment. “If a coffee supplier is found to have non-compliant products, then acts on the advice given by Trading Standards to be compliant, no further enforcement action will be taken.”
“The NZSCA has attempted to assure the Ministry of Business Innovation and Enterprise that this is not standard practice in the New Zealand coffee industry and have suggested that they would receive better traction by contacting these companies directly,” NZSCA wrote to its members, while noting that the organisation believes that using ounces is “is an easy communication between coffee suppliers and the customers.”
No exemption will be made as the Weights and Measures Act 1987 stipulates use of the metric system and does not have a provision for any industry wide exemptions.
