Cadbury's Green Hypocrisy

Cadbury has today been branded an environmental hypocrite for insisting suppliers meet the highest green standards whilst the board prepared to add millions of food miles to Crunchie, Fudge and other brands by moving UK production to Poland.

Brian Revell, Unite the union national organiser for food and agriculture, said Cadbury's signing up to the Carbon Disclosure Project's Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration was a real case of "do as I say not as I do." Closing the profitable Somerdale factory at Keynsham, between Bristol and Bath, and sacking 500 loyal workers, flew in the face of the aims of the environmental initiative.

"The hypocrisy of the Cadbury board is breathtaking," he said. "By closing its factory at Keynsham and moving its production to Poland Cadbury will be adding seven million food miles, if not more. That's not green that's ghastly."

Mr. Revell said 98 per cent of Keynsham's products were sold in the UK. The plant was profitable and productive and was recently lauded by top managers for its sales performance.

Cadbury was named in press reports today and over the weekend as having signed up to the Carbon Disclosure Project's Supply Chain Leadership Collaboration alongside other household names like Dell, Nestle, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble and Tesco.

"The project publicity says multinationals are trying to understand where the carbon emissions are lying in their supply chain," added Mr. Revell. "It should not take long for people to work out the answer as far as Cadbury is concerned.

"Frankly, if the board is serious about the environment it should ditch the Keynsham closure plans now. Shareholders should be questioning directors personally - and at the forthcoming AGM - about the environmental damage they are going to cause by the Keynsham chaos."

UNITE