The Shanghai Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau, a product quality watchdog, stated that the cosmetics giants have been using empty space in their makeup containers over the allowed 50 per cent ratio.
Six sets of Olay cosmetics were found to have an overpackaging problem, along with one batch of L’Oreal products and "some" produced by Garnier and Chando.
Of 105 batches of cosmetics tested 22 were found to fail packaging checks, having either excessive layers or too much space between wrapping and product.
The supermarkets concerned, which included Carrefour, Lotus, Century Mart and Metro, were told to stop selling unnecessarily packaged products or face a slap-on-the-wrist fine of 50,000 Yuan (US $8,064).