The company made the assurance while announcing its decision to recall eight kinds of its products that may contain small amounts of melamine.

King Car said in a statement that its canned coffee drinks have consistently used milk powders from Australia or New Zealand that are free of melamine contamination.

The statement further said the company took the initiative to send samples of the eight kinds of products, including an instant chicken/corn soup and seven flavors of powdered coffee drinks, to the Food Industry Research and Development Institute for testing after the disclosure that a shipment of 25 tons of melamine-tainted milk powder from China had been imported into Taiwan.

"Upon learning of the testing results that show eight kinds of its products contained traces of melamine, we immediately informed the Department of Health (DOH) of the findings and our decision to recall all of the potentially tainted products from the market, " the statement said.

The DOH already ordered a removal of all of those products from store shelves.

Speaking at a news conference, King Car Vice President Lee Yu-ting said the company had used Chinese-made non-dairy creamer in its eight kinds of products mainly because it intended to expand the number of its material suppliers.

"We feel deeply regret and sincerely apologize for the incident," Lee said.

According to King Car spokesman Ma Ming-hao, a total of 120,000 cases of the potentially tainted products had been distributed around the country and the recall was already under way Sunday morning.

"We are scheduled to pull 75 percent of the products off store shelves in three days and 95 percent of them within a week, " Wang said.

The DOH already banned imports of any Chinese-made foodstuffs containing milk powder, dairy products and plant proteins. DOH Deputy Minister Sung Yen-jen said earlier in the day that the import ban will remain valid until after Chinese authorities make a necessary clarification on the melamine contamination incident.

On Sunday, the Taoyuan county government sent health staff King Car's Pingchen factory in the northern county to confiscate its banned products. More than 9,000 cases of the eight kinds of tainted products in inventory had been seized, county officials said.

Meanwhile, the Consumers Foundation urged the DOH to ban imports of all Chinese-made baby formulas and foodstuffs for children aged under 2 to better protect local young children's health.

The foundation also renewed its call that the government create a multitiered food inspection mechanism as soon as possible to avert shoddy and dangerous products from entering Taiwan and facilitate tracking of substandard products in case they have made their way into Taiwan.

Melamine-tainted dairy products have killed four children and sickened 12,892 others in China as of 8 p.m. Sunday, according to official reports by the Chinese Ministry of Health.