Chocolate company Mars, which announced recently it is outsourcing some of its UK production to other European facilities, joins several other confectionery companies that have opted over the past year to downsize staff and transfer production outside the kingdom.

Mars said it would cut staff by 400 at its main UK plant in Slough and move production of its Twix bars to France and Germany and Starburst confectionery to the Czech Republic.
The company employs about 1,600 people at its Slough office and has another six sites in the UK.  It had conducted a review of its European business in January.
In announcing the cutback and outsourcing, it told staff it wanted to become more cost effective, according to Frank Loveday, regional officer of the Bakers, Food and Allied Workers’ Union.  
“The company made £140 million ($270 million) last year and just wants to make more. The managers have also been given huge pay increases. It is sick,” he said.
“The workers are in a state of shock because there has always been a feeling that Masterfoods would never make big job losses.”
But Loveday acknowledged that the redundancy package being offered was “reasonable,” although no substitute for a decent job. Other companies that downsized their British workforces recently were Nestlé, Cadbury and Kraft.
In April of 2004, Kraft, for example, closed its York facility and moved the production of its Terry’s Chocolate Orange, Terry’s All Gold and Twilight brands to Sweden, Belgium, Poland and Slovakia.