Toblerone loses Swiss exclusivity as production shifts east (updated)

SF Urban Properties AG

23/06/2022 14:28

(Adds Mondelez comment on packaging)
    By Silke Koltrowitz
    ZURICH, June 23 (Reuters) - Toblerone maker Mondelez
 MDLZ.O  will shift some production of its triangular chocolate
bars to Slovakia from Switzerland at the end of next year,
losing the "Swiss" attribute on its packaging in the process.  
    "From the end of 2023, we'll add a limited Toblerone
production in Slovakia," Mondelez spokeswoman Livia Kolmitz said
in an emailed statement on Thursday, confirming a report by
Swiss broadcaster SRF.
    Food companies are facing high cost inflation, but Kolmitz
did not connect the move to cost pressures, instead citing
strong growth which also meant the firm would be increasing
capacity at its Swiss production site in Bern.
    "Bern is at the heart of the Toblerone story, we'll keep
making our best-selling 100-gramme bars there," Kolmitz told
Reuters, ruling out job cuts. 
    Toblerone was first launched in 1908 and has been
exclusively produced in Switzerland since the early 1990s.    
    Under strict Swiss labelling rules, chocolate made abroad
cannot be called "Swiss", and Mondelez will thus have to remove
this reference. 
    "We'll relaunch the Toblerone packaging from this summer,
saying the brand was 'established in Switzerland'", Kolmitz
said, pointing to the brand's British website https://www.toblerone.co.uk/en
 for an idea of what the new packaging would look like. 

 (Reporting by Silke Koltrowitz; Editing by Elaine Hardcastle
and David Evans)
 ((silke.koltrowitz@thomsonreuters.com; +41 41 528 3638;))