A Garankuwa liquor wholesaler is fighting a battle in court with South African Breweries over contaminated quart beer bottles. Pat Sidley reports
A FASCINATING tale of bootleggers, shebeens, condoms in beer bottles, monopolies and homelands is unfolding in the Mmabatho Supreme Court as beer giant South African Breweries fights a court case which, if it loses, could set standards for new consumer rights.
The case involves a debt and contaminated beer in recycled quart bottles. Quarts of beer are very popular, particularly in shebeens and among poorer people. They cost less because the bottles are returnable: a deposit is repaid on the bottles so that they can be used again.
The case is very sensitive for SAB which not only has the lion’s share of the local market but also exports to several countries and has several agreements to brew well- known foreign brands, including Carling and Amstel.
The bottles referred to in the court case contained syringes, twigs, condoms, toothbrushes and other items.
The David sparring with the brewing Goliath is a liquor wholesaler operating of out of Garankuwa who owes SAB about R700 000. SAB wants this money back and is suing him to recover it.
Boon Tong Siew Martin Neoh, who owns a liquor wholesaling business which supplies, among others, unlicensed shebeens in the Garankuwa area, admits he ran up the bill for deliveries in November/December 1991. However, he contends that about 10 of the bottles in his consignment of 300 000 were contaminated with items including insects and
A bottle with a centipede in it had exploded in his lawyer’s office, he claimed. At the time, the beer came from United Breweries which brewed and distributed out of Bophuthatswana, but was owned by SAB.
He said in papers before the court that he expected his beer would “emanate from a plant which maintained a reasonable standard required for public health and safety.” This duty was breached, he says, and the beer was not fit for human consumption. He wants compensation for this and has asked for R1,5-million plus the cost of the legal
In the battle leading up to the court case against SAB, Siew charged that the brewery was behaving like a monopoly. The company reacted strongly to his charges of contamination. His supplies were cut off after he refused to pay his bill and took the issue up with the Competition Board. The board initially supported his view, but backed down in the face of SAB’s complaint that the board did not have jurisdiction in the then-independent homeland, although it had reinstated deliveries on a COD basis.
SAB is not denying that some of its quart bottles are contaminated, but says that the incidence of contamination is extremely low (about one in 100 000 bottles); it only involves quart bottles which are recycled with the contaminants placed there by consumers in the first place; and the process of pasteurising the beer, and cleaning the bottles means that the contents of the bottles are sterile in any event.
This is being contested in court by various experts including SAB’s own Gary James Steyn, a quality assurance manager at SAB’s plant in Garankuwa, who admitted to the court this week that contamination does happen.
He said the company does everything to preclude its occurrence. Explaining the process by which contamination can occur Steyn said: “Bottles from the trade invariably have foreign objects inserted in them.” These include cigarette ends, toothbrushes and branches.
The objects are pushed in by consumers through the neck of the bottle and expand once inside, making it very difficult to get them out later. A complex procedure comprising bottle-washing, machine-checking and human “sighters” sometimes lets a few bottles with “contaminants” slip through the net.
Asked how often this happened, Steyn said this was “to the fifth decimal place” (which means about one in every 100 000 bottles).
Answering questions under cross-examination it emerged that there can be “floaters” in beer — which are old protein matter from the beer used earlier in the same bottle — and that beer produced by SAB is good only for 12 weeks when not refrigerated.
Information about the time and place of manufacture is contained in either a code notched into the label or, more recently, in a code printed by a computer and ink-jet printer on to the bottle itself.
Both sides have brought in experts to contest the contaminants issue and the processes used to eliminate them. The contest only applies to the use of recycled
In a further twist, Siew is contending that the original contract cannot be enforced because the whole operation took place as a bootlegging operation to unlicensed shebeens — a contention which SAB hotly denies.
By the time the David and Goliath drama has played itself out, beer drinkers, as well as other consumers of bottled drinks, will know whether contaminants in drinks can ever be excused and SAB will know whether it has to change its processes radically to avoid contamination.
Siew maintains that he has brought the case to court because the poorer black beer consumers deserve a fair deal. SAB’s image and many millions of rand are at stake in the case.