A plastic bucket that fell into the oven where Twistees are baked melted and became part of the popular Maltese snack, leading to a recall of the whole batch.

The recall warning only affects 50 gram packets with a best before date of October 16, 2011, with lot number BFF HD, of which only “about 250” are unaccounted for.

Darrell Lea Foods Ltd said it had recalled all affected packets from shops and that the remaining packets were probably in the possession of customers.

The bucket, part of the Twistees’ production line in Marsa, fell into the oven on a busy day at the end of May, and production was stopped an hour later when staff noticed “the bucket was missing”.

“We ceased production and cleaned everything but some packets had already reached the market,” Steve Calleja, director of Darrell Lea Foods, said when contacted.

In all, the company said there were about 1,050 packets that had gone out to outlets, 838 of which had been recovered from shops, meaning some 212 are unaccounted for.

“We had to issue this warning just in case some people still have a packet from this batch at home,” Mr Calleja said.

“We didn’t resume production until we carried out preventive measures. We dismantled the whole conveyor,” Mr Calleja said, adding that, with the new system in place, the incident could not be repeated.

The company at first thought it had contained all suspect packets because it has a policy of storing packets for 24 hours before distributing them. However, that day, the deliveryman required more stock and picked up boxes of Twistees produced that same day.

“It is a strict policy, but this one escaped,” Mr Calleja said.

It was only when a customer reported last week of finding a piece of plastic among the Twistees that the company realised what happened and reported the case to the health authorities. It then started tracing the affected packets that had been delivered and recalled the packets from its clients.

Mr Calleja said the company would pick up packets from the affected batch itself and reimburse customers. Following that, the packets would be quarantined and destroyed with the rest of the jinxed batch.

The Environmental Health Directorate yesterday warned consumers not to consume Twistees from the indicated batch. Those who come across Twistees packets from the batch indicated above can call the company on 2144 1768 or the factory on 2124 4722.