It comes after six tourists have died in the country, including a 57-year-old American man, after suspected methanol poisoning.

Six people have died from methanol poisoning after staying at Nana Backpackers hostel: Simone White, Bianca Jones, Holly Bowles, Frela Vennervald Sorensen, 21, Anne-Sofie Orkild Coyman, 20, and James Louis Hutson, 57.

Southeast Asia has the "highest rates of methanol poisoning globally", said Al Jazeera, and this is often blamed on "economic pressures and weak regulations". Laos, despite its increasing popularity with backpackers, is one of the poorest nations in the region.

A factory owner has been arrested by police in a major breakthrough in the mass methanol poisoning in Laos that left six backpackers dead.

A Laos government document obtained by the ABC suggests the source of a methanol poisoning outbreak that killed six tourists is a rundown factory outside of Vientiane that was making vodka and whisky.

Source uncovered' as vodka factory shut down - Whisky and vodka factory in Laos closed after methanol poisoning outbreak kills six tourists including Londoner

The development comes as the mother of British tourist Simone White, one of the six tourists killed, speaks out for the first time.