Although the “information received” was not about the Coca-Cola brand itself, the company has frozen the production of soft drinks at a franchisee-owned bottling plant in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, after it got unverified information on the safety of certain beverages manufactured there.
According to Coca-Cola, the SLMG Beverages’ bottling facility is owned and operated by one of its independent franchise bottlers. The American company operates in India through its own bottling company, along with a bunch of independent bottling companies.
The beverage giant said, “We asked the bottler to pause production at this plant while we conducted extensive testing at both Indian and international accredited laboratories. In addition to validating that there are no health or safety concerns, we reviewed all plant processes thoroughly to ensure that production is run according to our standards”.
Now both Coca-Cola and SLMG are reviewing the operations before production resumes.
SLMG Group Chairman S.N. Ladhani said that the company sources all materials only from company-certified and authorized suppliers. “The company has established stringent systems to monitor the quality of the products in the marketplace through its market audits and consumer helpline. So, the question of using unauthorized and unapproved ingredients for beverage production doesn’t arise.
Ladhani also added, “Regular audits of the plant are a norm in the Coca-Cola system, and the Unnao plant has recently been audited by the company as part of the practice. On testing, the samples were passed on the defined parameters of safety and quality standards. In the audit, certain suggestions and observations were made on the current infrastructure, safety, and standard operating processes to scale them up and bring all facilities to the revised and improved global standard.
This is a regular process that is done in all 50 plants of the Coca-Cola system in India. The Unnao plant manufactures almost all soft drink brands of Coca-Cola. The SLMG spokesperson said the company was a leading Coca-Cola bottler.