Nestle’s Noodle Scandal - India 2016

Nestle’s Noodle Scandal - India 2016.

Nestle, the world’s largest food and beverage company was forced to recall its very popular instant noodles in India after an inspection of dangerously high levels of lead in some samples. The company has been selling this product in India for more than 30 years in different varieties.

The scale of this recall was one of the biggest in the recent times. The incredibly popular 2 - minute noodle brand called Maggie has a high distribution network in India and Nestle had an almost impossible task of tracking down and destroying every packet of noodles across the country. The cost of quality was tremendously high and almost cost half a billion. The share prices dropped and the company took a massive hit. The sales crashed by over a 90% in the instant noodle segment.        

The company estimated an alarming 400 million uneaten packets. The weight of the noodles that had to be recalled was 27000 tons and Nestle hired about 25000 extra trucks to carry the noodles. They then warehoused the excess packets and transported it to cement plants to be incinerated. The company then set up consumer help lines and were more active on social media and other media forms to assure the consumer that every possible step had been taken to give them back their favorite noodle. The marketing campaigns were carried out in full swing to bring back the customer satisfaction. However, this incident was a cautionary story of damaged crisis management on an epic scale.