Nigerian Bottling Company (NBC) has reacted to the directive issued by the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) to recall the company’s packaged bottled water ‘Eva’.
The company confirmed that it had circulated two batches of its Eva Water brand which were classified as below quality and unfit for public consumption. NBC said the 75cl products were produced between May 22-23, 2019 at its Asejire plant located in Ibadan.
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In a press statement seen by Nairametrics, NBC disclosed that it voluntarily notified NAFDAC of the quality issue before a recall order was issued by the regulator. According to NBC, NAFDAC was informed on June 20, 2019, after concerns were raised when the company detected its quality standards were not met during production.
The statement which was signed by the company’s Director of Public Affairs, Ekuma Eze, went further to disclose that withdrawal of the affected batches had also commenced even before NAFDAC’s order for a recall was given.
“We had commenced withdrawal of the affected batches which are 220519.14.27 AC4 and 230519.15.15 AC4, prior to the NAFDAC announcement and are cooperating with the Agency in their investigation. We regret the inconvenience this issue may have caused our consumers, and we request consumers in possession of products with the stated batch numbers to return them to our nearest offices or distributors/dealers for replacement.
“We confirm that there are no issues with other batches of our premium Eva Water and reassure our consumers of our commitment to highest quality standards, product safety and consumer satisfaction.”
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The response from NBC contradicts earlier reports which suggested NAFDAC received the complaints about the contaminated Eva water from consumers. Earlier, Nairametrics reported that the recall order issued by NAFDAC could cause the company to incur some losses.