Mondelez chewing gum leaves bitter taste in Southern Africa

But in 2010 the UK food giant Cadbury was eaten by an even bigger fish, the American firm, Kraft  Foods. Kraft had in turn been acquired by the US tobacco giant Philip Morris in 1988. With this rather unfortunate direct ownership of Kraft, a food producer by a very big tobacco giant it was time for basic rebranding to make sure that the company’s chocolate consumers were as a far away  as possible from the foul smell of Philip Morris cigarettes  and its many tobacco litigation cases in the USA. Following the merger with Cadbury, Kraft split off its global snacking business and  rebranded and renamed it  in 2012 as ‘Mondelez’- meaning ‘delicious world’ in French.

There was something very British, almost colonial about the structure of Cadbury in Southern Africa, having plants producing specialized products in four of the five SACU countries. Specialty chocolates were made in Namibia, chewing gum in Botswana, Bubble gum and candy in Swaziland and in South Africa chocolate products (with most of the 900 jobs) in Port Elizabeth,  South Africa.