After weeks of very bad press, Cadbury has bowed to consumer pressure and decided to stop using palm oil in its chocolate. You can read the details here. This is a major consumer victory, especially for people concerned about the relationship between palm oil production, global warming and habitat destruction leading to the deaths of orang-utans in Indonesia and Malaysia. I can’t help feeling that it’s too late for Cadbury to ever regain the trust and market share they used to enjoy in New Zealand. When Cadbury first announced that they had changed the way they made their chocolate and changed their packaging as well, we, like thousands of other Kiwis, immediately switched to Whittakers. Whittakers are a 100% NZ company, and we have discovered that we much prefer Whittakers to Cadbury, palm oil or no palm oil. No matter what Cadbury do from here, at PILOT, we’ll stick with Whittakers and thank Cadbury for pushing us to make that decision for us. What do you think people?
5 Comments
Good call by cadbury, shows the power of consumer pressure but I will also stick to whittakers me thinks…
x
People are saying Cadbury are “brave” but really, they were foolish and naive in the first place. An about-face is therefore not “brave” (insert your own analogy here). And in the PR activity since the move to palm oil (softly couched as “new recipe”) they have been nothing short of arrogant and patronising, digging their respective toes in. They do not deserve my hard-earned $, thanks very much. Whittakers, which has maintained integrity all throughout, do.
Couldn’t agree more Belinda!
Just found out today that Cadbury have also decided to use fair trade cocoa in their main product. Also a good move and success for the pressure groups. I’d be interested to know if Whittakers are also moving this way? Anyone know…. I emailed them.
Here’s the link to the Cadbury info if anyone is interested:
http://www.fta.org.au/cadbury-announcement/?sssdmh=dm16.391918
I am about to blog Green and Black’s vanilla as one of SoHi’s favourite things (we love Whittaker’s coconut too!)
Cadbury’s is tasting more and more like cheap Easter egg chocolate. The packaging isn’t fooling anyone. Less chocolate for the same price? Don’t think so.