Kraft sweetens jobs blow with extra investment

The company, which bought chocolate giant Cadbury, yesterday said it will make “significant investments” at four of its sites over the next two years, but 200 jobs will be cut through redeployment and voluntary redundancies over two years starting in March.

Kraft said its proposals were designed to keep Bournville, the Birmingham-based home of Cadbury’s chocolate, at the heart of the industry, and to bring biscuit-making to Kraft in the UK for the first time. About £6m will be invested in biscuit-making at the firm’s Sheffield plant, with the creation of 20 jobs, while £44m will be invested in chocolate manufacturing, benefiting Bournville, Chirk in North Wales and Marlbrook in Herefordshire.

Ian Dearn, head of manufacturing at the firm’s Sheffield plant, said: “It is great that Kraft Foods recognises the strength of the UK as a manufacturing centre. We are proud to have been selected to bring the manufacture of BelVita and world-famous Oreo cookies to the UK for the first time. We are also excited about the opportunity to create new partnerships with local farmers to supply the wheat for these iconic products.”

Kraft said that in March last year, following its acquisition of Cadbury’s, it made a series of commitments to employees, including no further plant closures and no compulsory redundancies in UK manufacturing for two years.

The firm said these commitments remained “fully in force” and were not changed by the announcement.

Kraft was criticised for closing Cadbury’s factory near Bristol after saying it wanted to keep the site open before the takeover.

The Unite union’s national officer for the food industry, Jennie Formby, said: “We deplore Kraft’s tactics of announcing this by press release – to the media first – without the courtesy of telling the workforce in advance. It is wrong that the first that hundreds of employees will hear about the threat to their jobs will be through the media.”