China's Tsingtao Brewery is under fire after a video emerged on social media showing a worker urinating into a tank at one of the company's plants.
The video posted on social media has gone viral, garnering tens of millions of views since it appeared last week.
It shows a man with a yellow hard hat and a blue uniform climbing over the side of a high wall. He then unzips his trousers and relieves himself all over the contents of the container at the Chinese beer factory in Pingdu.
Tsingtao, which describes itself as the sixth-largest global beer maker, said in a statement the incident had been reported to police at the "first opportunity".
"Our company attaches high importance to the relevant video that emerged from Tsingtao Brewery No. 3 on 19 October," the statement said.
"The company places high importance on the media reports and has reported the matter to the public security authorities at the first opportunity. The public security authorities are presently involved in the investigation."
It's not clear whether the person worked for the company but Chinese media quoted a Tsingtao source as saying the worker and the person who shot the video were not directly employed by the brewery.
The Bureau of Market Supervision and Administration of Pingdu City, where the factory is located, said in a statement they have set up a team and conducted an on-site investigation and sealed the whole batch of ingredients that appeared in the clip.
The statement added the bureau would deal with the matter seriously once details are confirmed.
The company has been widely criticised since the video emerged, with people on Chinese social media hitting out at Tsingtao.
"A piss that will ruin a lot of money, this worker has done some real damage here," a comment on Weibo reads.
"Good thing I don't drink beer - but it's unimaginable if this brand is finished because of this," one user said.
"Is this the first time though?" another comment reads.
The backlash isn't just on social media, a South Korean newspaper reported several restaurants, had applied for refunds on shipments of Tsingtao but added the beer's South Korean importer had turned down the requests.
"I asked if we could get a refund for the Tsingtao beer we already bought, but [the importer's representative] said that's not possible," JoongAng Daily newspaper quoted an employee at a Chinese restaurant in Seoul as saying.
The employee said diners had started requesting beers other than Tsingtao, according to the newspaper.
Shares in Tsingtao Brewery fell sharply when the Shanghai Stock Exchange opened on Monday morning but were trading broadly flat by the afternoon, the BBC reported.
