Kraft Foods to Restructure UK Confectionery Operations
Kraft Foods plans to invest £50 million in its UK confectionery manufacturing operations while cutting the workforce by 200 people. The 200 jobs will be shed at Kraft’s sites at Bournville, Birmingham, Chirk in Wrexham, north Wales, and Marlbrook in Herefordshire. The cuts will be made through redeployment and voluntary redundancies over two years from March 2012.
Kraft will invest £6 million in a new biscuits line at its site in Sheffield, which produces sugar confectionery products such as Trebor, Maynards and Bassetts, to facilitate the manufacture of Oreo and BelVita biscuits in the UK for the first time.
The remaining investment will be made on a range of projects to upgrade infrastructure, speed up production, reduce waste and improve energy efficiency at three chocolate confectionery manufacturing sites. This includes £13.5 million at Bournville, £3.4 million at Chirk and £2.6 million at Marlbrook.
“The ambition is for Bournville, Chirk and Marlbrook to remain at the centre of British food manufacturing and of the Kraft Foods network,” says Neil Chapman, Kraft’s manufacturing director, UK chocolate. “We continue to invest in our people and facilities, so we can increase productivity and transform our business.”
