Nestle India has asked its distributors across Calcutta to recall all varieties of Maggi noodles from the market, latest by Friday the 12th.

As per the letter sent to a major distributor of Maggi in south Calcutta last Friday evening, the company has asked them to immediately stop sale of the noodles and recall all variants and sizes of the packets from the shops and keep them separately.

The recalled packets would then be taken back by Nestle to be destroyed in a separate unit outside the state, the distributor said.

Metro met three major distribution agencies in Calcutta to trace the path of a packet of Maggi from the store to the company warehouse to the destruction unit, in a bid to make the city Maggi-free by the end of this week.

Store racks to Distributor

The managing director of a major distribution agency in south Calcutta said they had been able to recall 10,000 cartons - with 96,000 Maggi packets - till Sunday night.

This agency alone has deployed 120 personnel and has hired as many as 100 vans to visit as many stores as possible to collect Maggi cartons.

Sales targets have been replaced by recall targets. "Every sales personnel has to meet a sales target by the end of every week. But this time, we have asked them to forget about the sales target and focus solely on recalling Maggi from the market. They will have to get back all the packets by Friday," said the official.

The official added that their company still has "around 3 lakh packets" in stores spread across parts of South 24-Parganas and south and north Calcutta and so they have asked the sales personnel to work extra hours to meet the recall target.

To get a progress report, the official called up one of the area managers enquiring about the number of cartons collected till then. It was around 1.30pm on Monday and the person at the other end of the line said: 233 cartons. Speed up, was the retort from this end.

The distributor is handing over a "credit note" - in the form of a voucher - to the seller mentioning the number of packets returned, along with the cost. "The seller can redeem the credit note either in cash or against other products of Nestle," the official.

Distributor to Distribution point

Collection from the store done, the vans are being sent to the distribution points - a warehouse maintained by the distributors to store products before they are sent to the stores. Here the cartons are sealed and stickers with "Stocks not for sale" pasted on each carton.

Before the sealing, a team of officials notes down the batch number on each Maggi packet and writes that on a piece of paper and pastes it on the carton along with the 'not for sale' sticker.

For the south Calcutta agency, its five distribution points - four of them in South 24-Parganas - have been cleared of other stocks and a separate space made just to keep the cartons of Maggi, both recalled and unsold.

The official added that the staff at the distribution points have also been asked to work overtime.

Once the entire lot is back at the distribution point, they would have to call the regional sales manager and inform them about the number of stocks that were in hand and the number of stocks that have been recalled.

Distribution point to warehouse

Once all Maggi packets disappear from the market, Nestle will deploy trucks to carry the cartons from the distribution points to the warehouse of the manufacturer at Dankuni in Hooghly.

The Dankuni warehouse is generally used to stock Nestle products before they are sent to the distribution points across Bengal. "But now, they have been asked to make a separate space for returned Maggi cartons and keep a detailed stock of the number of cartons collected," said one of the distributors.

Before transporting the returned cartons, Nestle would again give a credit note to the distributors. "We can encash the credit note to pay off the company's previous dues with us. However, if there are no dues, we can either get back the money in cash or buy other products of the same value," said another distributor who controls the Maggi market in central Calcutta.

Warehouse to Destruction unit

Most lips are sealed but many stockists whispered about a "destruction unit".

"It is somewhere in Hyderabad," said a distributor who has been doing business with Nestle for the past 25 years.

Here, Maggi packets from across the country are likely to be transported and stored before being destroyed maintaining standard safeguards and in the presence of representatives of the national food safety regulation authorities.

The distributor said that this is possibly the same unit where the company destroys all its "expired" products.