The cheeky toilet roll con fooling us all

IF you think you’re getting a bum rap from your toilet roll, you’re right — makers have been shrinking products and pocketing the savings.

Consumers are getting a bum rap as toilet paper producers reduce sheet size but keep the same prices. Picture: Nathan Edwards

EXCLUSIVE

IF you thought your toilet roll was getting smaller, you are not going crazy — makers have not only reduced the number of sheets in a roll they have sneakily shrunk each square, without cutting the price.

And some consumers believe the cardboard tube has been expanded to cover up the con.

The bum rap, which is leaving consumers loo-sers at the checkout, has emerged on the eve of the start of a historic court case in which it is alleged laundry powder makers conspired to halve the size of their products while keeping prices constant and make $150 million in the process.

There is no suggestion that toilet roll makers engaged in a cartel. Their decisions to secretly dud customers have been taken independently.

Quinn Wood, 2, and Sandy the 8 week old Labrador puppy. Picture: Nathan Edwards

News Corp Australia can reveal the $63 billion US multinational Kimberly-Clark has admitted to recently reducing the length of Cottonelle toilet paper by 1cm to 10cm.

The price remained the same.

Sheet thickness was increased by 10 per cent and softness was improved, a spokeswoman said.

The length reduction follows a 10 per cent decrease in weight in 2014.

Both moves made the rolls smaller.

Sorbent toilet paper is understood to have shed 0.5cm to 10.5cm. Its Melbourne-based maker, ASX-listed Asaleo Care, which has a market worth of $1.2 billion, repeatedly refused to comment.

The maker of Quilton, privately owned Sydney-based ABC Tissue Products, divulged that it had recently cut the number of squares in a roll from 190 to 180.

“Faced with a tough decision: increase our prices or reduce the sheet count, we chose the latter in order to ensure Quilton’s premium quality remains affordable for all Australians,” said national sales manager Edmond Chan.

Some consumers believe the cardboard tube has been expanded to cover up the con. Picture: Thinkstock

“Indeed we have been able to resist this change until now while other toilet tissue brands made similar sheet count reductions some time ago as well as sheet size reductions more recently.”

There is no evidence that tubes have been expanded.

As a safeguard against being ripped off, shoppers could use the unit prices displayed on supermarket shelves, said Choice spokesman Tom Godfrey.

However, the shrinking of squares or reduction in weight wouldn’t show up in unit pricing.

What some toilet paper makers are doing “is not transparent to consumers because the unit of measure on shelves is price per 100 sheets,” said consumer advocate Ian Jarratt, whose campaigning led to unit-pricing’s introduction in Australia seven years ago.

Meanwhile, in the Federal Court this week, the maker of Radiant laundry powder, PZ Cussons, will defend allegations it was part of a cartel that denied consumers lower prices.

The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission claims PZ Cussons, Colgate-Palmolive (Cold Power) and Unilever (Omo) arranged to stop supplying “standard concentrates” at the same time and only supply half-size “ultra concentrates” from that time, while keeping prices as they were for standard concentrates.

PZ Cussons general counsel Karena Reid said the company maintained it was not at fault and would “vigorously defend” the allegations.

Colgate-Palmolive recently agreed to pay an $18 million fine, while Unilever got immunity by rolling on its rivals.

On Friday Woolworths was ordered to pay $9 million for being “knowingly concerned” in the alleged cartels. The supermarket giant hosted a meeting where Colgate-Palmolive pitched what came to be known as “project mastermind”.

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