Chinese Beer Brand Tsingtao Sees Stocks Crash After Employee Caught Pissing In Beer
The shareholders must surely be pissed.
By Dale John Wong — 27 Oct 2023, 06:02 PM
Following a viral video of an employee taking a leak into a tank at one of its breweries, leading Chinese beer manufacturer Tsingtao has experienced a huge drop in stock prices
On 19 October, a short video uploaded to Weibo showed one worker at a brewery in Qingdao city climbing onto a malt container before urinating into it. The clip went viral, gathering tens of millions of views and outcries of disgust from netizens in the process.
According to The Independent, a probe was launched into the incident by local authorities, while Tsingtao itself came forward to acknowledge the video and report what had happened to the police.
Later, Tsingtao also revealed that it had managed to seal the affected batch of malt, assuring the public that it wouldn't be used for the mass production of beer.
Tsingtao stock prices take a massive dive
The fiasco ended up causing the brewery's share prices to plummet by 1% on the Shanghai Stock Exchange on the day following the incident, and then a further 7.5% a few days later on 23 October.
Can Chinese food products really be trusted?
In markets with strong import links, this recent incident at the Tsingtao factory has spiked concerns regarding the safety and cleanliness of China-imported foodstuffs.
In South Korea for example, communication efforts by the company to quell public concerns have mostly fallen flat on consumers.
“It's not a matter of whether the products were for the domestic market or export, as the incident has already undermined public trust in the company,” said one unnamed individual in Seoul, according to South China Morning Post.
“Consumers do not know what is happening at other Tsingtao factories.”
Curiously, this isn't the first time such an incident has occurred in China
In 2021, a video showing topless men stirring cabbages in some questionable liquid before tossing the vegetables into a rusty excavator shovel went viral in 2021.
