A Swiss swizz! Toblerone told to ditch Matterhorn
IT’S a famous image as recognisable on the wrapper as the triangular chocolate chunks are inside.
But Toblerone is to be banned from using its Matterhorn mountain peak as it moves some of its production out of Switzerland.
The motif falls foul of ‘Swissness’ marketing rules introduced in 2017, which restrict the use of Swiss provenance indicators in food, industrial products and services.
Instead, the 14,692ft mountain on the border between Switzerland and Italy will be replaced with a more generic Alpine summit, the brand’s US owner Mondelez said.
A spokesman said: ‘The packaging redesign introduces a modernised and streamlined mountain logo that aligns with the geometric and triangular aesthetic.’
Toblerone packaging will now read ‘established in Switzerland’, rather than ‘of Switzerland’. For a product to be marketed as ‘made in Switzerland’, 80 per cent of the raw ingredients must be sourced from the country with most processing taking place there.
For milk-based products the quota is 100 per cent, with exceptions for ingredients that cannot be sourced from the country.
Mondelez, which has owned Toblerone since 2012, announced last year that from the end of 2023 it would move some of the production to Slovakia, where it also o produces the Milka chocolate e brand first made in Switzerland.
Since 1908, Toblerone has been n produced in Swiss capital Berne, e, whose symbolic animal, a bear, is s hidden in the peak design.
In 2016, Toblerone increased the e gaps between UK chunks to o supposedly cut the weight from m 170g to 150g.