bezdomny ex patria

Mr Martinsen did the obvious and found the Ioland website. Why it never occurred to me to google Ioland even though I knew it was East Tree’s trading name I don’t know, but never mind… It states very clearly:

All the products are manufactured strictly under every single infant food safety standard in New Zealand by Sutton Group New Zealand.

On its Strategic Partner page it has a brief introduction of Sutton Group, placing it in Airport Oaks and with a picture that would seem to be taken from Sutton Group’s homepage, but I can not find any mention of East Tree or Ioland on Sutton Group’s (rather uninformative) website. They do have a ‘contact us’ page, perhaps I could try asking them…

I note that a Sutton Group of New Zealand has previously been caught exporting substandard infant formula to China, with that previous incident also involving iodine levels.

Ioland also claims:

As a registered dairy maker in Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (MAF) and New Zealand Food Safety Authority (NZFSA), the products of this expert team are now distributed to global customers across Asia, Africa, Europe and Oceania.

Great. But is it a registered dairy exporter? Because my understanding is that is the status required to legally export dairy products from New Zealand. Well, they do also have a ‘contact us’ page, so I guess I could ask them too, but…

…The address listed on Ioland’s website, whether the Chinese- or English-language versions, are for Ningbo, Zhejiang, China, and not the Auckland, New Zealand address for East Tree International Trading Limited that the Companies Office says uses the Ioland trading name. Well, I guess I could ask them about that, too…

I do notice, though, that although Ioland does use the same Chinese name for its products, 奥兰,  as that which has had 26 tons of infant formula recalled over iodine levels, I do not see that really weird seeming English name Orkloland that I found yesterday. But I’m struggling to find a “超级金装” on Ioland’s products page.

And I have one more question: If they’re so keen to play up the “made in New Zealand” angle and have a silver fern logo in the bottom left corner of every page on their site,

why the hell do they have an Australian flag next to the Chinese flag on their website?!

Just for the record: Yes the Aussie and Kiwi flags are similar, but the New Zealand flag has four five-pointed red stars with white borders. The Australian flag has six seven-pointed stars of varying sizes, all of which are white.