Yeah, that is the other thing.
Lots of these "SEO" guys, and not many actually know SEO properly.
Yes, it will be nice to have everything all good on a catalog page - SURE! Do not get me wrong there, but in terms of a client and their SEO is a catalog page worth the importance? NOPE!
Search engines just some them for classification purposes for the products ultimately.
When you search for stuff yourself to buy, what shows up? The product or the Catalog of a set of them?
The Product
That is the focus so I would remove and advise the client no to worry and ask him those same sort of questions to prove that the product matters, not the catalog.
And then what do they do if a catalog keeps ranking higher then the product they actually want to push and sell more? that would be a bit naff too.