TSINGTAO, a leading Chinese beer manufacturer, has seen its stock price plummet after a video of an employee leaking into a tank at one of its breweries went viral.
The short video posted to Weibo on Oct 19 showed a worker at a brewery in Qingdao city climbing onto a malt container before urinating into it.
The video garnered tens of millions of views even before the video went viral, with netizens clearly disgusted.
According to The Independent, local authorities launched an investigation into the incident, while Tsingtao itself came forward to acknowledge the video and report what had happened to the police.
As a result, the brewery’s share price dropped by 1 per cent on the Shanghai Stock Exchange the day after the incident, and then another 7.5 per cent a few days later on Oct 23.
Furthermore, in markets with strong import links, the recent Tsingtao factory incident has raised concerns about the safety and cleanliness of China-imported foodstuffs.
In South Korea, for example, the company’s communication efforts to assuage public concerns have mostly fallen on deaf ears.
However, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened in China.
In 2021, for example, a video of topless men stirring cabbages in a questionable liquid before tossing the vegetables into a rusted excavator shovel also went viral.
