When a man in Germany tried to score a personalized bottle of Heinz by scanning the label's QR code, then it linked him to a webpage of hardcore porn.

When Daniel Korell scanned the code, he was thinking of accessing a promotion to design his own label, but instead he was directed to a German porn site called FunDorado.

The mix-up was down to the fact that Heinz ran the contest between 2012 and 2014, and the link expired this year, TheLocal reported.

Embarrassingly for Heinz, the company didn't hold onto the URL once it ended, and the porn site snatched it up, meaning that Heinz's defunct shortcut now pointed to a page full of graphic thumbnail images linking to porn videos.

Korell wrote he tried the code with "several phones" and tried manually entering the web address, but he received the same result each time.

“Your ketchup really isn’t for underage people,” Korell wrote on the company’s Facebook page. “Even if the bottle was a leftover, it’s still in lots of households."

"It’s incomprehensible that you didn’t reserve the domain for one or two years. It really doesn’t cost the Earth.”

Heinz’s social media team immediately replied: “We really regret the event very much and we’re happy to take your suggestions for how we implement future campaigns on board.”

The company also offered Korell a free bottle of ketchup with a label of his own design by way of apology and said it would gladly accept "suggestions for the implementation of future campaigns."

Taking advantage of the free advertising, FunDorado's Facebook page chimed in, suggesting that Heinz had confused their “Hot Pink” porn site with “Pink EZ Squirt” ketchup.

They also left a comment on Korell's photo, and offered him a free year's subscription.

Back in February, a family-friendly buffet restaurant in London also suffered an embarrasing mix-up when the restaurant aired gay porn on its dining room TV screens.