20,000 fake supplies and components stopped from being imported into Ghana by Ghanaian authorities.
HP has announced that it helped Ghanaian customs authorities at the country’s largest sea port in Tema to intercept almost 7,000 counterfeit HP printer cartridges and around 13,000 counterfeit boxes, security labels and empty cartridges believed to be for manufacturing counterfeits as they were being transported from Asia to Africa, reports GhanaWeb.
Three “suspicious consignments” were seized by authorities as they were about to enter Ghana from South-East Asia, with Geoff Eyles of HP’s Anti-counterfeiting Investigations and Enforcement team commenting: “HP appreciates the work of the Ghanaian authorities in protecting consumers against the deceitful and illegal actions of counterfeiters […] We are proud that HP played a vital role in supporting local law enforcement authorities by identifying the seized items as counterfeits on-site and gathering valuable intelligence on the consignors and intended recipients.”
Eyles added: “We welcome the Ghanaian Customs Authorities’ commitment to pursuing and prosecuting illegal counterfeiters, whose products contain unknown chemicals which damage printers and could harm the environment. We believe that the intelligence gathered through this seizure will aid further actions against counterfeiting in Africa.”
According to the article, HP has conducted nearly 1,000 investigations across the EMEA region over the last four years “resulting in over 800 enforcement actions” and the seizure of “nearly nine million units of counterfeit products and components”.
The Recycler recently reported that Brother helped Dubai authorities to seize over 6,200 counterfeit Brother toner cartridges and other consumables from a warehouse in Ajman; and last year HP was reported to have seized over 30,000 counterfeit printing supplies following three co-ordinated raids in Dubai.
HP has also recently spoken out about the differences between original, clone and remanufactured cartridges in an attempt to prevent its customers from being misled by incorrectly labelled products after it caught a third party cartridge reseller marketing new HP compatible cartridges as being remanufactured, calling it a “disservice” to its customers.