TTL's Hualien Distillery begins massive cleanup after April 3 quake

Hualien, April 8 (CNA) Workers at state-run Taiwan Tobacco and Liquor Corp.'s (TTL) Hualien Distillery have begun efforts to clean up nearly 200,000 bottles of alcohol that were destroyed during last week's magnitude 7.2 earthquake.

During a tour for members of the media on Monday, distillery head Wang Cheng-li (王正利) said the Hualien facility, located near Qixingtan Beach, mainly produces rice wine, along with smaller quantities of craft-style beer and a series of liquors containing real gold flakes.

During the quake last Wednesday, more than 16,000 12-bottle packs of various types of alcohol -- or 192,000 bottles -- were shattered, causing financial losses of at least NT$14 million (US$435,845), Wang said.

"And that's only a rough estimate, because a lot of the alcohol is stacked together [in storage], and we haven't been able to take a detailed inventory," he added.

Wang explained that clean-up efforts had only started in the last day or two, due to initial concerns about some of the higher-proof spirits sparking an explosion.

Compared to last Wednesday, Wang said the 6.4 magnitude quake that struck Hualien on Feb. 6, 2018 seemed to shake even more violently. Even so, it will likely take "at least a week" before the distillery is cleaned up and able to resume production, he said.

While the distillery's production lines were damaged in the earthquake, the worst-hit part of the facility was its storage warehouse, which remains littered with broken glass bottles, cracked aging vats, and pools of various types of alcohol.

"That's 30-year-old Shaoxing wine with the darker color," Wang said, pointing out stream-like stains running along one of the building's outer walls.

According to Wang, after the 2018 earthquake, the distillery installed protective netting in its storage areas, and also set stricter limits on how high pallets of bottles and aging vats could be stacked.

While those changes failed to prevent extensive losses last week, the situation would likely have been even worse without them, said deputy distillery head Chien Kai-wei (簡凱偉).

"Six years ago, we lost over 10,000 vats of Shaoxing wine, and we reduced that to around 1,000 vats this time," Chien said.

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