AUSTRALIA-NATIONS LARGEST SMALL GOODS COMPANY.
THE largest supplier of smallgoods in the country will face Downing Centre court on Monday, charged with 145 counts of alleged country-of-origin labelling offences, after a six-month investigation by the NSW Food Authority.
If found guilty, Primo could be fined as much as $1.45 million.
The smallgoods baron Paul Lederer has spent the past 12 months denying his company had been engaged in alleged meat substitution, by passing off cheap subsidised Danish pig meat as Australian produce.
Primo’s Queensland operations have also been under surveillance for the past 12 months by that state’s food authority, which stationed a full-time safety officer in the company’s Wacol plant for much of last year. In addition to evidence of misleading labelling, the authority said in April that there was "a high probability there could have been a health risk" due to the way meat was being stored, transported and handled.
A spokeswoman for Safe Food Queensland said yesterday the monitoring process had been concluded and the company was no longer the subject of any food safety concerns.
Primo’s largest client is Coles, which contacted the manufacturer to express concerns over its labelling practices early last year. Coles declined to comment yesterday on the grounds the matter was now before the court but said its contracts with all suppliers stipulated that all regulatory requirements had to be met.
Mr Lederer, who owns two-thirds of Primo and serves as the company’s chief executive, did not return the Herald’s calls yesterday. When the Herald contacted Mr Lederer last February, he emphatically denied his company was being investigated.
His lawyer, John Landerer, said his client was the victim of "false and sinister" information and threatened legal action if the Herald pursued the story.
"The fact of the matter is that Primo is not under any investigation," Mr Landerer said in relaying his clients’ instructions.
A subsequent letter by Mr Landerer sent the following day confirmed that Primo was co-operating with food authorities over an unprecedented country-of-origin issue, and the company was not ruling out the possibility of human error, should any allegation be proved.
Hungarian-born Mr Lederer, 62, is estimated to be worth $225 million, according to last year’s BRW Rich List, due to his majority shareholding in Primo which he obtained after his uncle, Andrew Lederer, died in 2004. His business partner, John Hunt, controls the remaining third.
The action taken by the NSW Food Authority comes as Primo is seeking to expand its Queensland operations with a new $70 million Brisbane plant over the next 18 months.
Mr Lederer told The Courier- Mail newspaper last month that "improved efficiencies" had protected his company from the global economic crisis.
Last September he and his wife, Eva, spent $27 million buying a house in Australia’s most expensive street, Wolseley Road in Point Piper.
