Kafka - 1.0.0 | Remove log4j.jar

We wanted to remove the log4j.jar but ended up with a dependency on the kafka.producer.ProducerConfig.

Caused by: java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: org/apache/log4j/Logger
    at kafka.utils.Logging.logger(Logging.scala:24)
    at kafka.utils.Logging.logger$(Logging.scala:24)
    at kafka.utils.VerifiableProperties.logger$lzycompute(VerifiableProperties.scala:27)
    at kafka.utils.VerifiableProperties.logger(VerifiableProperties.scala:27)
    at kafka.utils.Logging.info(Logging.scala:71)
    at kafka.utils.Logging.info$(Logging.scala:70)
    at kafka.utils.VerifiableProperties.info(VerifiableProperties.scala:27)
    at kafka.utils.VerifiableProperties.verify(VerifiableProperties.scala:218)
    at kafka.producer.ProducerConfig.<init>(ProducerConfig.scala:61)

Is there any configuration available which can resolve this error.
Please note we are not using log4j.properties or any other log4j logging mechanism for Kafka connection in the application.