Food officials had investigated the company's Vietnam production facilities in July last year and found that the company was storing old raw materials for its Samurai energy drink in the same warehouse as fresh beverage base. Coca-Cola says it immediately isolated the ingredients and has been working closely with the government to ensure that the ingredients and finished product were destroyed. The company says it got approval from the department of environment to destroy the Samurai powder on 11 April and the destruction process began last Monday under close supervision of the department of health and department of environment. Local media reported that more than 12.9 tonnes of ingredients were destroyed. Most of them had been imported from Australia, the US, Indonesia and the UK in 2003 and 2004. However a Coca-Cola Vietnam spokesperson told AP-Foodtechnology.com that the case was "an old matter" relating to one batch of raw material from November 2004. She stressed that the materials were "not in their optimum condition but not past their expiry date". "We would like to reassure everybody that during this period the product was completely isolated and was not used by the plant in production of Samurai Powder. In addition, finished samples of Samurai Powder were tested and confirmed that there were no health concerns," said the firm in a statement.
