Kraft Foods has just bought Cadbury.

Cadbury to be part of Kraft

Is this good news, or bad, for chocolate lovers?

I've always loved Cadbury more than other brands, and always thought Cadbury's should be owned by a man in a bowler hat, not some multinational,lol.
If they don't change the product I don't mind too much but if they tinker with it I'm a lost customer.

My feelings exactly. if I go back to UK and the flake in my 99 is different, they have had it with me.

I wonder if they'll join forces and make a cheesey chocolate? Nothing would surprise me. Now who wants to have a bet about how long it will take before Nestle buys the combined company?

I'm hoping that it will actually improve the quality of Cadbury bars sold here. Currently they are made by Hershey, and you really have to be desperate for a piece of chocolate to want to eat one.

And, far too often, the Cadbury dark chocolate bars I did buy were stale, possibly because they just weren't selling well. Although, since the good news about the heart-healthy properties of dark chocolate, the dark bars tended to sell more briskly than the Cadbury Dairy Milk whenever my local stores had them at a reduced price (who says Americans aren't health conscious? ). Given a choice, I'll continue to opt for Dove dark chocolate miniatures and pass on the Cadbury.

Dove Chocolate

Kraft does make the Terry's Chocolate Oranges, and those are fairly good, so perhaps there is some hope...

If they alter the British recipes people will be more than peeved.

Tizzabelle, if Nestle does buy the new company, it'll just be one more company to add to the Great Nestle Boycott.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9_boycott

Am I allowed to be sad to see the last British icon being sold abroad? Especially as the Cadbury brothers had such a radical, kind approach to their workforce. They got the idea that a happy, well-housed, well-fed workforce was a productive workforce - outrageous! And now compare that with the modern "anything goes" methods of most companies, and Kraft must be worse than average if they are now being singled out for mention as unreliable and dishonest.

At least, I think Cadbury is the last great iconic British brand - all the others have been bought by Nestle.

It seems the way of the new millenium. The well known companies which have belonged to a country (although most 'outsourced' the majority of their actual business over the last couple of decades) with many years of history and household names have either fallen altogether (Rover, Saab only this month, Abbey National, Midland Bank, Access etc) or more so been taken over by far bigger players elsewhere to somehow sidestep the monopoly laws.

Bear in mind until 2008 Iceland went on a binge of reckless takeovers worldwide, offering huge rates of interest on the investments by bank depositors, until the business could no longer either service the debts or the interest payments. It can't be good for anyone outside the aggressors to take jobs and profits out of the country and this is just asset stripping of the lowest sort. Britain will soon have no manufacturing of any sort outside cottage industries, and when all paper assets fail we'll have nothing left to fall back on. If you can't be self sufficient in a recession you must rely on other countries to pull the strings. Our major energy companies were all taken over by European (mainly French and German) companies, the result was our prices have doubled while theirs remained relatively stable, as their countries have price regulations but ours don't, so we subsidise their low profits at home.

The Common Market was designed specifically to stop this kind of exploitation from happening as the trade was supposed to be equal across the community. But that has been the one thing totally absent from the equation. OK, not related to America but does show the EU as it is now is no more protection from predators from either within or without, as each country has absolutely no say over who buys who outside their own very narrow monopoly laws. When Bournville becomes a ghost town and the chocolate is made and imported back from Poland (the first theory I heard yesterday of their plans) it can never be the same.

Just so long as they don't change the recipe. Cadbury is the best type of chocolate.

Oh Please don't change the recipes for Cadbury's chocolate. It's the best. American chocolate is too waxy for my tastes.

They probably will. The Keynsham (Bristol) factory is being closed, and it looks like production will be moved to Poland.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8507780.stm

Even if they use the same ingredients, different locations and different levels of staff expertise are bound to have a result on the product. Like Pears soap hasn't been the same since it's been made in India, and Japanese whisky will never taste the same as whisky made in Scotland with Scottish water.

I am now Boycotting all Kraft products and Cadburys due to selling us the British peoiple out.

A week ago they said they were keeping the Bristol factory open. They're just doing what every company does when it takes over another company - lying.

I thought I'd look for another home-made brand, and I started with Green and Blacks. G&B is organic, the first British brand to get a Fairtrade mark, and it started in London in 1991. So far so good.

Oh dear it's owned by Cadbury.

G & B - our story

If it's operating separately, perhaps it won't be included in the takeover - perhaps Kraft are only interested in a high-volume product. I shall see what I can find out tomorrow.

Once a British (or any other company) loses it's national owners then most of the profit and any number of jobs they please leave the country. The small number of British factories producing goods for foreign companies is limited to a few car assembly plants, they ship the stuff over from cheaper manufacturers and probably because of EU grants subsidising our relatively high wages are then assembled over here. But if anyone thinks company ownership is irrelevant then wait for a war or similar crisis and see how easy it is to obtain goods when they're all required to be imported. Then the significance hits suddenly, even though a quick look to history tells you that it happened every other time elsewhere before.

Short term greed always comes ahead of long term stability and that's why we had the credit crunch and now businesses worldwide are either being bought by those less affected or simply going broke. But the money hasn't disappeared, it's just gone to the people who sold things on credit and the borrowers couldn't pay the lenders for it. Total nonsense and any decent economist wouldn't have made it so easy as the results are obvious to any clever kid in primary school. Numerous warnings were given over here and were either ignored or the messengers were sacked for ruining morale.