Express & Star

Christmas boxes axed by Cadbury

Cadbury is cancelling its Christmas box delivery of chocolates to thousands of workers in a bid to save money, it was revealed today.

Published

The lavish box of chocolates, sweets and biscuits has been a Christmas tradition for generations of Cadbury's pensioners.

But it was revealed that owner Modelez International is bringing it to an end. Instead, pensioners will receive a one-off £15 gift voucher.

The move is to save costs, the company confirmed. It is thought stopping the Christmas box will save the company around £300,000 a year.

Mondelez formed when Kraft, the US company that controversially bought Cadbury for £11.7 billion in 2010, split in two.

A Mondelez International spokesman said today: "We understand this decision is unlikely to be well received but, as the custodians of the Cadbury Pension Fund, we hope members will understand we have a duty to make sure it's run efficiently."

"We face increasing pension costs at a time when the number of pensioners within the Fund is rising annually and it's simply no longer viable to send 14,000 parcels out each year.

"We have the long term interests of the Pension Fund at heart and made a commitment earlier this year to pay additional special contributions of £30m a year until 2019 to address the fund's deficit."

Sorry, we are not accepting comments on this article.