The Coca-Cola Company has halted production of soft drinks at a franchisee-owned bottling plant in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh after it “received unverified information” regarding the safety of certain beverages manufactured there, the beverages maker said.

The “information received” was not about the Coca-Cola brand, the company told ET in response to a questionnaire. Coca-Cola said the bottling facility is owned and operated by one of its independent franchise bottlers, SLMG Beverages. The American company operates in India through its own bottling company and through a bunch of independent bottling companies.

“We asked the bottler to pause production at this plant while we conducted extensive testing at both Indian and international accredited laboratories. In addition to validating that there are no health or safety concerns, we reviewed all plant processes thoroughly to ensure that productionis run according to our standards,” the company said.

Coca-Cola added the company and SLMG are reviewing the operations before production resumes. A person familar with the situation said the plant should resume operations soon.

SLMG group chairman SN Ladhani in email to ET early last week said the company sources all materials only from company (Coca-Cola) -certified and authorised suppliers. “The company has established stringent systems to monitor the quality of the products in the marketplace, through its market audits and consumer helpline. So, the question of using unauthorized and unapproved ingredients for beverage production doesn’t arise.”

In a second email, Ladhani said: “Regular audits of the plant is a norm in the Coca-Cola System, and Unao plant has recently been audited by the Company as part of the practice. On testing, the samples were passed on the defined parameters of safety and quality standards. In audit, certain suggestions and observations were made on the current infrastructure, safety and standard operating processes to scale them up and bring all facilities to the revised improved global standard. This is a regular process which is done which is done in all the 50 plants of the Coca-Cola system in India.

The Unnao plant manufactures almost all soft drink brands of Coca-Cola. The SLMG spokesperson said the company was a leading Coca-Cola bottler.