Chinese authorities have detained a Tsingtao Brewery worker who was caught urinating into a malt vat on camera following an argument with a colleague who leaked the footage.
Authorities said on Wednesday that the worker was detained on 22 October for intentionally damaging company property – three days after the video from the Pingdu beer factory emerged.
The shocking video of the man, whose surname has been confirmed as Ciu, went viral on social media after its release, with comments divided between hilarity and serious concern.
The company, who also launched an investigation into the incident, said in a statement: ‘Our company attaches high importance to the relevant video that emerged from Tsingtao Brewery No. 3 on 19 October.’
The local government’s investigation team released a statement saying the man had urinated into a malt container that had just been emptied, as he helped unload malt from a truck.
A man seen urinating in a vat at the Tsingtao beer factory in Pingdu, China, has been detained, along with the person who filmed him
An earlier Tsingtao statement said: ‘Our company attaches high importance to the relevant video that emerged from Tsingtao Brewery No. 3 on 19 October’
According to this report, the worker – who was not directly employed by the factory – urinated into the tank following an argument with a truck driver.
Mr Cui then climbed into the freshly empty container before urinating into it.
Those actions were caught on camera by the driver, who then published the video on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
The incident caused Tsingtao a major headache with its stock price plummeting nearly 7% on the Shanghai exchange, before rallying for a net drop of 1.15% last week.
Tsingtao describes itself as the sixth-largest global beer maker and China‘s second-biggest brewery.
They said they had ‘completely sealed’ the batch of malt which had seemingly been contaminated.
‘The company continues to strengthen its management procedures and ensure product quality,’ their statement, published on Weibo, continued.
Tsingtao also said that they were pursuing measures to close ‘loopholes in the management of raw material transportation’.
These include fully enclosing trucks ‘so that there is no contact between personnel and raw materials throughout the process’, and introducing an AI-powered ‘behaviour recognition monitoring system’ within the factory.
