Factory closure no sweet end for storied brand

The pending closure of the Cadbury chocolate factory in Dunedin, with the ultimate loss of more than 360 jobs, is steeped in irony and is a microcosm of today’s cut-throat corporate world.

The owner, Mondelez International – an offshoot of the giant American company Kraft, which took control of Cadbury after a hostile and bitter takeover launched in 2009 – last year returned an international profit of $10 billion.

Despite this the company has announced the upcoming closure of the Dunedin factory because, in a nutshell, it can make more money by shifting the operation to its Australian factories.

There were crocodile tears from Mondelez area vice-president Amanda Banfield, who broke the bad news to the Dunedin workers.

She said: ‘‘This is an incredibly difficult announcement, given the factory’s proud history and the outstanding performance of our employees.’’

Nevertheless, Mondelez International intends to rip the heart out of Dunedin’s labour market to increase its profit.

What a far cry from the ethos of the company when it was led by the Cadbury brothers, Richard and George, who inherited the operation from their father in Birmingham in 1861.

The Cadburys, like fellow British chocolate manufacturers Fry, Rowntree and Terry, were Quakers and they believed that the creation of wealth should result in the funding of social projects.

When the brothers inherited the factory it was haemorrhaging money but despite this Richard and George drew on their personal savings to not only keep the operation alive but also to improve their workers’ wages and provide them with education, clubs and excursions.

They also had an eye to the future and, inspired by the success of their fellow Quakers at Fry in Bristol, who ran the biggest chocolate factory in the world, the brothers took a gamble and imported a revolutionary machine from their Dutch competitors, Van Houten, to provide high quality chocolate powders.

The new press enabled the company to placate the contemporary fears of food adulteration – some unscrupulous manufacturers were supplementing their cocoa with brick dust - and this brought about an upturn in Cadburys’ fortunes.

Meanwhile, Nestle had solved the difficulties of mixing the water in milk with fats in cocoa to make the world’s first milk chocolate.

The Cadbury brothers were quick to respond to this food revolution and in the 1880s opened factories in South-East Asia, the Middle East, the West Indies and Australia.

The Dunedin association began when Cadbury teamed up with a local biscuit maker, Richard Hudson, in 1930 to manufacture Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate bars.

Production of a confection that was to become a New Zealand favourite, Jaffas, began a year later.

After the rapid expansion of the company in the latter part of the 19th century, the brothers began to plough their now-considerable profits into social reform.

This zeal for philanthropic endeavours was epitomised in the construction of Bournville, a model factory in a rural setting that boasted affordable housing, landscaped parks and recreational activities for the company’s workers.

It was a world away from their employees’ cramped homes in the Birmingham slums and the workers rewarded their employers’ enlightened attitudes with fierce loyalty.

Many of the Cadburys’ contemporaries predicted the philosophy was doomed to failure but, on the contrary, fellow chocolate manufacturers Rowntree in York and Hershey in the United States soon followed suit.

The company’s success was sealed when it launched Cadbury Dairy Milk with its ‘‘glass and a half of full cream milk’’ in 1905.

Bournville drinking chocolate followed a year later and Milk Tray in 1915.

Four years later Fry merged with Cadbury to ensure their survival in the face of stiff competition from Swiss chocolate manufacturers.

It was probably the first sign that the philanthropic principles of the Quakers would eventually be eroded by the financial markets’ demand for profits ahead of social concerns.

Fast forward to last week’s announcement of the proposed closure of the Dunedin factory and it’s clear that the Cadbury brothers’ ideals have long since been consigned to the history books.