Kmart Group - Product quality and safety


Kmart Group recalls

Kmart Group remains committed to developing high-quality, safe and compliant products that enhance customer experience and deliver commercial growth. The Kmart Group quality teams prioritise customer safety, with product safety recalls conducted as required or as a precautionary measure to eliminate customer exposure to potentially unsafe products. 

Kmart recalls

Kmart conducted three product safety recalls of own-brand products during the year, compared to zero recalls last year. Following the recalls, continual improvement was undertaken, including:

  • enhancing the electrical assurance program for products containing switches, to elevate Kmart practices beyond the mandated standards and align with regulator expectations
  • performing assurance over the age grading processes for toy products sold by Kmart.

Target recalls

Target conducted two product safety recalls of own-brand products during the year, compared to one recall last year. Continual improvement assessments were undertaken following these recalls, which resulted in refining processes for the sizing requirements within the mandatory standard for children’s nightwear and reviewing buying processes.

Kmart Group product quality initiatives

Kmart Group’s Quality teams work closely with suppliers to conduct safety investigations to ensure product integrity and performance is consistent. The Group is committed to continual improvement in all areas of product quality and safety to meet customer and stakeholder expectations and is responsive to industry trends and regulator priorities. Throughout the 2023 financial year, the division adopted improvements in its operations, including:

Kmart initiatives

  • completed a program of work in line with the mandatory button battery standards, to enhance compliance for local suppliers of products that contain button cell batteries
  • established a process to ensure keycodes are mapped to the most recent Safety Data Sheet (SDS) format, streamlining Kmart’s ability to comply with the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017
  • implemented uplift to quality control governance processes, resulting in identifying quality issues in shipments worth $0.68 million, and proactively rectifying these before shipment, avoiding the likelihood of consumer complaints, withdrawals, recalls or incorrect returns
  • achieved efficiencies in quality inspections by equipping Quality team members with digital devices that provide real-time inspection reports and record consistent data
  • conducted risk-based quality tests of factories in China and Bangladesh under the self-inspection program, with the inspected factories clearing the inspections.

 Target initiatives

  • implemented a framework to manage the regulatory, compliance and approval requirements for Target formulated products containing industrial chemicals
  • conducted audits on nursery products that contain claims relating to breathability and implemented corrective actions where required
  • developed and implemented an automated product withdrawal process that simplifies, expediates and assigns end to end accountability for product withdrawal
  • developed compliance accountability process maps for buying, identifying the compliance accountabilities by role and enhancing transparency among Target teams
  • as a part of the preventive quality framework implementation, increased overall inline inspection by 13 per cent compared to last year.