Dubai Customs Destroyed Counterfeit Products

Originally published at Gulfnews.
75,000kg of fake goods destroyed in 4 months

According to Gulfnews, more than 75,000 kilograms of counterfeit and banned products have been destroyed by Dubai Customs, Dubai Municipality and the Dubai Economic Department this year.

Ahmad Al Muhairi, senior manager for business awareness in Commercial Compliance an Consumer Protection (CCCP) sector under the Dubai Economic Department, which deals with counterfeit and banned products, claims the number has been on the rise since May 2017.
“It is difficult to put a value to these goods right now, but I’m certain we have exceeded 2017’s (January to April) figure of Dh114.5 million easily,” he said. E-cigarettes, e-hookas, tattoo inks and mobile hookah pipes, which are hazardous to health, top the list of items that authorities are on the lookout for.

Those seized items are sent to recycling centers where these products are destroyed and recycled. The recycling center said they received 20 metric tonnes (20,000 kilograms) of fake goods between January 5 and April 30, including fake printer cartridges, luxuries, digital products and even forbidden items.
“For printer cartridges, liquid flavours of e-cigarettes and hookahs, laptops and all electronic items – a segregation process is undertaken. Glass components including watches are shredded together so that they could be used as raw material in cement plants while the others are compressed or recycled along with plastic items,” said Danbappa Muhammad, project manager of recycling at the centre.

In March, the authorities destroyed goods worth Dh1.19 million in a single day. According to the Dubai Economic Department, shoes made up a huge chunk of the seized goods in terms of value at Dh400 million while designer bags and leather products came in second at Dh72.1 million followed by electronic goods.