Authorities in northern China have ordered a Coca-Cola bottling plant shut after finding its products were contaminated by chlorine, according to a government statement.
Shanxi Province ordered an investigation after media reports that a batch of drinks contained water with higher levels of chlorine, the province’s quality bureau said at the weekend.
PRODUCTION STOPPED
A receptionist at Coca-Cola Shanxi Beverages Co (可口可樂山西公司) yesterday confirmed that the plant had stopped production, but declined further comment.
Coca-Cola in China could not be reached yesterday, a public holiday.
The contamination occurred in February when water with small amounts of chlorine accidentally flowed into water used for drinks during maintenance work, Xinhua news agency said on Sunday.
WHSTLEBLOWER
An anonymous company whistleblower told local media that nine batches of products were contaminated, it said.
Xinhua quoted an official at the Shanxi plant as saying that its products were safe and did not present a threat to human health.
hazardous
Chlorine is used in water treatment to kill bacteria, but high levels can be hazardous.
China has experienced several scares over food safety in recent years, many blamed on lax supervision or producers deliberately cutting corners and deceiving consumers in search of profits.
GROWTH MARKET
China is one of Coca-Cola’s most important growth markets, accounting for about 7 percent of its global volume last year, the US company said.
Coca-Cola has said it plans to invest more than US$4 billion in China over the next three years starting from this year.
The company has more than 40 bottling plants in China, where it cooperates with Chinese food giant COFCO (中國糧油食品集團) and Hong Kong conglomerate Swire Pacific.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
MAJOR BENEFICIARY: The company benefits from TSMC’s advanced packaging scarcity, given robust demand for Nvidia AI chips, analysts said ASE Technology Holding Co (ASE, 日月光投控), the world’s biggest chip packaging and testing service provider, yesterday said it is raising its equipment capital expenditure budget by 10 percent this year to expand leading-edge and advanced packing and testing capacity amid strong artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing chip demand. This is on top of the 40 to 50 percent annual increase in its capital spending budget to more than the US$1.7 billion to announced in February. About half of the equipment capital expenditure would be spent on leading-edge and advanced packaging and testing technology, the company said. ASE is considered by analysts