Below is an excerpt from an email from starbrite:
Dear Starbrite Antifreeze customer;
We regret to inform you that a production error has occurred with our filling partner in Massachusetts that produces antifreeze for us in the New England territory. Our filling partner uses an automated process to blend the various storage antifreeze products (-50, -100 etc ) and they had a new employee key in the wrong information for all of our blends out of that location. The nature of the data entry mistake also created incorrect info for our Quality Control process which resulted in the error not be being caught. We have identified the error and corrected it, as well as enhanced the QC process to prevent this from happening again. We are 100% confident that all product flowing out of this facility will be completely in spec for all production made as of 9/18/20.
To clarify, this error/recall only affects our New England storage antifreeze market and all production out of our other two facilities has been inspected and is perfect. No other Starbrite products are produced at this New England facility so all Starbrite branded products are also fine in all markets.
There will be a number of corrective steps that we have already begun. Our plan is to quickly produce and ship replacement product directly to affected dealers as well as re-stock our distributors. We are fully aware of how critical storage antifreeze is at this time of year and want all of our customers to know that we have our entire team working non-stop to correct this issue.
Step 1. Is asking dealers to stop retail sales and to suspend any winterization of boats until we have replaced the recalled product or identified that the products you have were produced to our specification. A small silver lining to this issue is Starbrite was shipping correct product at the very beginning of this season from our facility in Alabama so there is a lot of good product that is safe to use. By identifying that good versus bad product will allow us to get replace product out quicker and will help dealers with the burden of having to re-winterize.
Step 2 is asking the dealers to identify if the products they have are good or bad. We realize the time crunch on antifreeze so if we can easily identify good product then those dealers are not affected with this recall and can continue winterization.
Next steps after determining the dealer has bad product. Please quarantine the product and contact us for pick up. We already have your original orders from Kellogg and are in process of producing replacements and will be shipping them direct to your location via LTL transport. We expect to have all replacement orders filled within a 10 day window. Below is contact information for the Starbrite logistics team and you can call or email with any questions or requests for updates. Any boats that have already been winterized using recalled product will need to have the antifreeze replaced. We have set up a claims process for affected dealers. Please email antifreezeclaims@starbrite.com as early as possible with the number of affected boats to set up your claim. The dealer will get a claim number after contacting us and we will authorize the repair and arrange for payment directly from us. Please also send any questions or concerns to this email and we will respond ASAP.
We will be sending out regular updates to this process as it evolves. We want to thank you for all the support of our brands thru the years and thank you for working thru this error with us. Our goal is to get this issue corrected as fast and painless as possible for all of our customers.
Please feel free to contact any of our Starbrite sales associates or myself at any time.
Regards;
Greg Dornau
EVP Sales
Dear Starbrite Antifreeze customer;
We regret to inform you that a production error has occurred with our filling partner in Massachusetts that produces antifreeze for us in the New England territory. Our filling partner uses an automated process to blend the various storage antifreeze products (-50, -100 etc ) and they had a new employee key in the wrong information for all of our blends out of that location. The nature of the data entry mistake also created incorrect info for our Quality Control process which resulted in the error not be being caught. We have identified the error and corrected it, as well as enhanced the QC process to prevent this from happening again. We are 100% confident that all product flowing out of this facility will be completely in spec for all production made as of 9/18/20.
To clarify, this error/recall only affects our New England storage antifreeze market and all production out of our other two facilities has been inspected and is perfect. No other Starbrite products are produced at this New England facility so all Starbrite branded products are also fine in all markets.
There will be a number of corrective steps that we have already begun. Our plan is to quickly produce and ship replacement product directly to affected dealers as well as re-stock our distributors. We are fully aware of how critical storage antifreeze is at this time of year and want all of our customers to know that we have our entire team working non-stop to correct this issue.
Step 1. Is asking dealers to stop retail sales and to suspend any winterization of boats until we have replaced the recalled product or identified that the products you have were produced to our specification. A small silver lining to this issue is Starbrite was shipping correct product at the very beginning of this season from our facility in Alabama so there is a lot of good product that is safe to use. By identifying that good versus bad product will allow us to get replace product out quicker and will help dealers with the burden of having to re-winterize.
Step 2 is asking the dealers to identify if the products they have are good or bad. We realize the time crunch on antifreeze so if we can easily identify good product then those dealers are not affected with this recall and can continue winterization.
- All products delivered to dealers before 8/26/20 came from Starbrite Alabama and is good product. So if you received an early shipment before this date you are fine using the product.
- All production as of 9/18/20 from any of our facilities is good.
- For shipments received between 8/26/20 and 9/18/20 the dealer will need to look for the production codes on the product to determine where that product was produced. This is an easy step. All 55 gallon drums and 275 gallons totes produced at our NE filling partner will have the date of production hand written on the top of the drum/tote in permanent marker. (See picture #1- NE Facililty drum/tote look) attached that shows how this looks. All case/gallon production from our NE filling partner will have a batch code printed on the outside of the box as well as the individual bottles, this batch code uses Julian dates (see picture #2- NE Facility case look and picture #3- NE facility gallon look ). The bad product was all produced in 2020 so the dealer will be looking for any cases/gallon bottles that have a batch code that reads SPNE with 20 as the second set of numbers. For example SPNE 255 20 11:14, “SPNE” indicates the facility in NE, “255” indicates the day of the year produced, “20” indicates the year produced and “11:14” indicates the time the batch was run that day. There fore any batch code that reads SPNE 261 20 was produced on or after 9/18/20 and is good product. Any product that has SPNE 260 20 or older ( meaning less then day 260) is considered bad and subject to the recall. If for any reason the dealer cannot locate or read the batch info then we will consider that product to be bad and subject to recall.
- Shipments from Starbrite Alabama ( which are all good ) will have the date code printed on the gallon jug and will NOT begin with SPNE ( See picture – Kinpak Gal Label ). Drums and totes from Alabama will have a white decal attached to the drum/tote that has a “Lot #” printed on the white label ( See picture - Kinpak Drum and Tote Label ) and will not have the date written in marker on the top of the drum.
Next steps after determining the dealer has bad product. Please quarantine the product and contact us for pick up. We already have your original orders from Kellogg and are in process of producing replacements and will be shipping them direct to your location via LTL transport. We expect to have all replacement orders filled within a 10 day window. Below is contact information for the Starbrite logistics team and you can call or email with any questions or requests for updates. Any boats that have already been winterized using recalled product will need to have the antifreeze replaced. We have set up a claims process for affected dealers. Please email antifreezeclaims@starbrite.com as early as possible with the number of affected boats to set up your claim. The dealer will get a claim number after contacting us and we will authorize the repair and arrange for payment directly from us. Please also send any questions or concerns to this email and we will respond ASAP.
We will be sending out regular updates to this process as it evolves. We want to thank you for all the support of our brands thru the years and thank you for working thru this error with us. Our goal is to get this issue corrected as fast and painless as possible for all of our customers.
Please feel free to contact any of our Starbrite sales associates or myself at any time.
Regards;
Greg Dornau
EVP Sales
