A PONTYPOOL music venue owner may stop stocking cans of Red Bull, citing concerns for his business, after claims of a contaminated can was sold.

Nick Byrne, who runs The Dragonffli, poured a can of the energy drink as a mixer to a customer at the tail end of last year.

After discovering a “white and cloudy” substance in the glass, Mr Byrne sent the contents to the Austrian firm for analysis.

“It was just a regular of Red Bull which I served with a vodka to the customer,” said Mr Byrne, also the chairman of Pontypool Community Council.

“I opened the can up and when he poured it into the glass, it seemed fine.

“He took one drink of it and it looked like he was going to heave.

“He told me that it didn’t taste right so I asked him what the problem was.

“He tipped the rest of the contents out of the can and it looked like a white and cloudy substance.

“It made me feel a little bit sick when I saw it.”

“It was not green, so I didn’t think it was mould, but I had no idea what it was.

“There was nothing wrong with the can – it was still in date until February 2019.”

However, the Dragonffli owner may stop stocking the drink due to concerns for his business.

“I am disappointed about this," he said.

"I have got in contact with them to find out what I should do to report the issue and it felt for a time I was being passed from pillar to post.

“It is a popular product and a brand that is well-known. You don’t expect to find something like that in a can and my worry is that people may turn on my business as a result.

“It may get to the stage where I take the decision to stop selling it.

“I do buy quite a lot of it, but I have stopped since this happened. I have a number of cans left from the time when it happened also.

“For me, it is just the aspect of what that substance could have been. It could have been toxic for example and someone could have been very ill as a result.”

A Red Bull spokesperson said: “The can was sent to our test facility in Austria and our tests found that there was no possibility of any foreign substance entering the can within the production process.

“We retain samples of all batches and knowing the batch number enables us to then check whether there were any irregularities of any sort in a particular batch.

“There was no such irregularity in Mr Byrne’s batch.

“Also, there was no evidence of any dysfunction during the production process.

“Neither is it possible for an ‘substance’ to enter a can while it is being filled: there are filtering processes which would make this impossible.

“Were these filtering processes by some remote chance to ever become damaged, that would be apparent in the subsequent batches. This did not occur.

“Red Bull takes quality in the supply chain very seriously and our distribution partners comply with our high-quality standards to ensure our product is in the best possible condition once it leaves our care.

“We have relayed this information and informed him that he will be visited at his venue by a Red Bull representative to discuss the matter further.”