Greenyard to re-open Hungarian plant after finding listeria cause (updated)
13/09/2018 08:39
(Adds detail, background)
Sept 13 (Reuters) - Belgian frozen foods producer Greenyard
GREENY.BR said on Thursday it would re-open its Hungarian
plant after identifying the cause of an outbreak of the
food-borne disease listeria, driving its shares 15 percent up.
Greenyard said it had found "persistent presence" of
listeria monocytogenes bacteria in one of the freezing tunnels
and would therefore close down this tunnel.
On June 29, the Hungarian Food Safety Authority issued a
resolution for Greenyard to stop all marketing and to recall
all its frozen food produced in the Hungarian plant.
Greenyard shares plunged 38 percent on July 16, its worst
day since going public in 1999, following local media reports
that deaths in Europe due to a listeria outbreak were
potentially linked to frozen vegetable products produced by the
company's plant in Hungary.
The company is confident that the impact would be within its
previous assessment of 30 million euros ($34.87 million) due to
the restart of the facility. Its shares were 13.4 percent up by
0735 GMT, having risen as much as 15.2 percent earlier.
The re-opening of the facility has been reviewed by the
authorities and will be based on "stringent release procedures",
the company said.
Greenyard said it had shifted some of the production to
other facilities in Europe and using the facilities of
subcontractors for some products, adding it was also
implementing additional safety and cleaning measures.
($1 = 0.8604 euros)
(Reporting by Zuzanna Szymanska; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu and
Emelia Sithole-Matarise)
((zuzanna.szymanska@thomsonreuters.com; +48 58 772 0920;))