Coke Recalls Bottles of Pomelo in Belgium

Beverage giant Coca-Cola Co. said it had recalled 700,000 bottles in Belgium of a citrus-flavored drink called Pomelo after finding that color and taste had been affected slightly by exposure to light.

“It’s a preventative measure,” Steve Leroy, a spokesman for Coca-Cola Belgium, told Reuters. “It’s not dangerous at all to health, but we don’t want to expose our customers to an off taste.”

Coca-Cola, whose reputation and sales were dented badly two years ago when it was forced to recall millions of cans and bottles of its soft drinks across Europe after a health scare surfaced in Belgium, began the recall on Friday and expects to complete it by Wednesday, Leroy said.

The 1999 recall was traced to certain batches of carbon dioxide and the odor from a chemical used to treat storage pallets.

The recall issued on Friday affects 700,000 20-centiliter glass bottles of Pomelo for sale to restaurants, bars and cafes.

“The total production run was 700,000 bottles, but we’ve already blocked two-thirds . . . [that] was either in our warehouses or in the warehouses of beverage wholesalers,” Leroy said.

Pomelo, which was introduced to the Belgian market early this year under a company initiative to develop local products, is sold in cans to the retail market.

The 700,000 bottles subject to recall represent about 7% of total daily sales of all Coca-Cola products in Belgium, Leroy said.

The company has not yet calculated the cost of the recall, he said.