24th November, 2010
Following a Consumers’ Advocate report on complaints by consumers over dirt particles found in some bottles of Smirnoff-ice drink in parts of Lagos, bottlers of the premium drink, Guinness Nigeria Plc, says full investigation has commenced to ascertain the veracity of the claim.
In a statement by the Corporate Communications Manager, Kingsley Uranta, the company said that after reading the publication, an in-house procedure was initiated to investigate the allegations in the report.
According to him, the in-house procedure, after visiting the distributor mentioned in the report, found no incident of contamination in any of the Smirnoff Ice drink in their stock. A copy of the statement reads: “We have received an electronic copy of an article published in P.M.NEWS in which it was alleged that there may be contaminated Smirnoff Ice in the Nigerian market”
“On hearing this complaint we have immediately activated our in house procedures to investigate the allegation made in the publication. We have visited the distributor mentioned in the publication and have found no incident of contamination in the product”.
Mr Uranta, however, said that Guinness will continue further investigation on the complaint.
He assured consumers of all brands of Guinness products that the company places its consumers above any other consideration and take issues concerning its brands and consumers very seriously. While Consumer’s Advocate awaits the final report of investigation into this issue by Guinness, we advice that the company’s investigation should not be limited to bottles of Smirnoff-Ice in stock at depots and distribution outlets but also those ones already in circulation.
Meanwhile, we advice consumers of all kinds of drink to checks the bottles properly for dirt before drinking. This is because our report has found that there are numerous fake drink manufacturers currently across the country.
