The chemical substance ITX, which is used in packaging inks, has been discovered in two Austrian juice brands in Croatia and 33,000 cartons of juice will be withdrawn from the market, the Osijek-based Croatian Food Agency said last month.
Managers of the Austrian Pfanner have called on the Swedish company to explain the case.
TetraPak reported on Tuesday that it had provided all relevant Croatian institutions with documentation and available results of an analysis with regard to the ITX (isopropylthioxanthone) substance.
"We have notified Croatian institutions of all conclusions and findings which the European Commission and the European Food Safety Agency (EFSA) made on 9 December 2005 regarding the ITX substance," TetraPak said in the press release.
EFSA considers this substance to be of low health concern.
TetraPak in Croatia is in permanent contact with its buyers and since 1 January this year it has no longer manufactured offset packagings with the ITX substance, the Swedish company reported.
Peter Pfanner, a co-owner of the Pfanner company, told a news conference in Zagreb on Tuesday that they had asked TetraPak to apologise and give a full explanation over the problem when small quantities of that chemical substance, which was not dangerous for the health, was found in Pfanner juice in Croatia.
The owner said that his company had been thrust into limelight over the problem it had not caused and that damage had been caused to Pfanner.
Peter Pfanner also insisted that TetraPak should have informed relevant bodies in Croatia that 0,00003 gramme of ITX per kilogramme was an unharmful quantity causing no risk to human health and that it could be found in thousands of other products, too.