Four people suffered minor injuries from misshapen twist-top bottles of Budweiser beer that US brewer Anheuser-Busch said it was still withdrawing from store shelves across Europe.
The world“s large…
Four people suffered minor injuries from misshapen twist-top bottles of Budweiser beer that US brewer Anheuser-Busch said it was still withdrawing from store shelves across Europe. The world“s largest brewer was nearly finished with the massive recall it launched on 2 September of 5.8 million bottles in 12 countries, said Bill McNulty, managing director-Europe for the European Trade unit of St. Louis-based Anheuser. “There were four (injuries). Cut lip, cut hands. One person thought they had ingested glass. We“ve been in touch with all of them and everyone is fine, thank goodness,” McNulty said. Adding to a summer of food and drink health scares across Europe, Budweiser announced earlier this month that shards of glass could break off from the rims of some bottles improperly made at glass plants in Spain and Portugal (see GlassOnline report of 16/9/99). The beer in the bottles was fine, but Anheuser pulled 25-centilitre and 33-centilitre sizes in Spain, Portugal, Malta, Denmark, Sweden, Cyprus, Switzerland, Belgium, Latvia, Germany and the Netherlands, and only 25-centilitre bottles in France. “Consumers are still calling and asking for information about refunds. So we know consumers are still returning product to the retailer,” McNulty said. Since an initial batch of 10 consumer complaints, which included the four injured people, McNulty said that eight additional complaints have come in, but no word of new injuries. No estimate of the final cost to Anheuser of the recall was available. “We don“t expect that it“s going to be material to earnings. The effected volume was only one-third of one percent of our annual European volume,” McNulty said. Withdrawn bottles are being collected in warehouses to be destroyed, he added. Misshapen bottles were made by bottle suppliers in Spain and Portugal, in both cases due to worn out bottle moulds. Spain“s Vicasa, majority owned by Cristaleria, was scheduled to resume output in the first week of October. Portugal“s Barbosa e Almeida resumed production recently. “We“re restocking shelves right now. The product is back in the market and we started filling the pipeline again last week,” McNulty said, estimating that supply of “The King of Beers” in Europe had been disrupted for about two weeks. The Anheuser action was initially reminiscent of a massive June recall of soft drinks by Coca-Cola in France and the Benelux nations, as well as the withdrawal of Belgian food products worldwide after animal feed there was found to be tainted with the cancer-causing chemical dioxin. But the Budweiser recall never spiralled out of control and had little impact on Anheuser shares, which were down less than 1% recently at US$ 73.75 per share on the New York Stock Exchange. On the day of the recall, the shares closed at US$ 77.25.