Kraft-Cadbury to shift production to Poland

The US giant Kraft Foods, which has recently merged with British confectioner Cadbury, is planning to move its plant from Bristol to Poland by 2011.

In January, after a long battle, the American company took over the 186-year-old British confectioners for 19.5 billion dollars.

Kraft assured that none of the eight Cadbury’s factories in Great Britain, which employ 5,600 people, would be closed down. However, the company has changed its plans. “This is a difficult decision (…) It became clear that it is unrealistic to reverse the closure programme, despite our original intent to do so,” Irene Rosenfeld, chairman and chief executive of Kraft Foods told the BBC.

Kraft Foods explained that the decision to shut down the factory in Keynsham, near Bristol, was mainly based on the fact that Cadbury had already invested more than 114 million euro in new factory in Poland and the majority of the production lines have already been transferred there.

As a result of the factory closure in Bristol 400 people will lose their jobs. The British Unite trade union accused Kraft of deliberately deceiving hundreds of Cadbury workers who had trusted that the American company would not reduce employment in Britain.

So far Cadbury and Kraft have fiercely competed with each other on the Polish market. In 1999, Cadbury bought Wedel, a Polish chocolate company, which now will have to be sold in order to avoid the monopolisation of the Polish confectionary market, as requested by the European Commission.