The owner of sweet maker Cadbury has said it is stockpiling ingredients and finished chocolate bars and biscuits in case Britain crashes out of the EU with no deal.
Hubert Weber, president of Mondelez Europe, which owns Cadbury, said: ‘Like the whole of the food and drink industry in the UK, we would prefer a good deal that allows the free flow of products as that would have less of an impact to the UK consumer.
‘However, we are also preparing for a Hard Brexit and, from a buffering perspective for Mondelez, we are stocking higher levels of ingredients and finished products, although you can only do so much because of the shelf life of our products.
“We have a contingency plan in place to manage [a Hard Brexit], as the UK is not self-sufficient in terms of food ingredients, so that could be a challenge.’
Mondelez is the snack business which was spun out of Kraft Foods, which took over Cadbury in 2010. It also makes a range of other snacks including Oreos, Ritz crackers and Bassett’s wine gums.
It is Europe’s number one in snack foods, selling in more than a million stores in more than 50 countries.
Mr Weber said he wished that Britain was ‘at a different stage at this stage’ and hoped that a deal could be agreed by next year.
British shoppers could face higher prices and fewer choices if not, he warned.
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