Cadbury’s coming home! US food giant to make Dairy Milk in UK again

CADBURY will produce all of its Dairy Milk bars in the UK again after shifting some manufacturing to Poland.

Mondelez, its US owner, was accused last year of breaking a take-over promise by making some of its signature chocolate bars outside of its historic factory in Bournville.

It raised fears that the link between Britain’s biggest chocolate brand and its old Quaker headquarters near Birmingham was being weakened.

But after investing £75million in its Bournville plant, Mondelez has promised to bring all Dairy Milk chocolate production home.

Glenn Caton, its president for Northern Europe, said: ‘We have been selling every single thing we can make from this factory for the last ten years. When we had peaks of demand that we couldn’t supply we did have to offload a couple of bars temporarily.’

He said the investment in the factory was vital in securing the future of chocolate-making at its historic home. New machinery allows it to make more chocolate but with a reduced workforce. Mondelez says while it has fewer workers, they are employed in better roles with more apprenticeships and career opportunities.

Cadbury was sold to US food giant Kraft for £11.5billion in 2010, which later spun it off into a company called Mondelez along with a string of other confectionary brands. It immediately closed a Cadbury’s factory near Bristol and opened a factory in Poland, where Picnic, Crunchy and other chocolate bars are made.

Earlier this year it was revealed some of its 95g Dairy Milk bars were also being made in Poland. However Mondelez has now said this production will be brought back to the UK, adding that the same amount of chocolate is made in Bournville today as when Cadbury was bought.

‘There was no switch of production,’ said Mr Caton, 45. ‘We were selling everything we could possibly get off the lines.’

Mondelez has ploughed millions of pounds into new machinery at Bournville – allowing it to make more chocolate but also trim down the workforce.

Its newly-installed production lines shoot out millions of chocolate bars with just a quarter of the staff.