The Ministry of Commerce and Industry has shut down a detergent factory in Sulai district in east Riyadh for producing and bottling items past the expiry date and for storing dangerous chemicals in the factory premises.

The Ministry seized all the products which will be destroyed. The owner of the plant has also been summoned for interrogation and legal action, local media reported.

The plant adopted primitive methods to manufacture and bottle products manually with workers making soap mixtures in the production room using traditional cooking pots on flares using gas cylinders.

Earlier, the ministry’s regulatory teams stopped a truck heading for the local market carrying detergents, bottled and packed by the factory. On testing the seized items, authorities found that it did not comply with standards and specifications.

The seized products contained more than 3,500 irregular products and 6,700 empty packets ready for filling in addition to big quantities of expired raw materials and perfumes, the media said.

The plant’s closure comes in the wake of the ministry’s extensive crackdown on plants and stores Kingdom-wide to ensure that the products, stored or offered on sale, had the required quality standards and free from any irregularities harmful to the health and safety of consumers, ministry officials said.