Wesfarmers Limited (ASX:WES) owned Coles has admitted it likely contravened the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s (ACCC) consumer law after running a campaign on its store brand milk on social media.
The supermarket giant has agreed to publish corrective ads on the same online platforms the material originally surfaced, including YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
The video and cartoon was named ‘Our Coles Brand Milk Story’ and ran at the beginning of last year but was met with complaints from dairy farmer organisations
ACCC chairman Rod Sims says Coles claimed the farmgate milk price rose from 86 cents per two litre bottle of Coles-brand milk in 2010-11 to about 90 cents in 2011-12.
However, Mr Sims says this was in fact was an estimate and final industry figures showed the 2011-12 farmgate milk price actually fell to 84 cents.
Wesfarmers boosted its net profit to $1.4 billion in the first half of the 2014 financial year.
