Visited the Cadbury factory at Chirk today.
I always enjoy industrial visits, and this was no exception. The remarkable cleanliness of food processing, which I also witnessed recently at the Rachel’s Organic factory at Aberystwyth, never ceases to impress and is immensely reassuring.
The Chirk plant is Cadbury’s principal facility for the processing of cocoa beans, imported via Liverpool. The beans are transformed into cocoa liquor and then taken for further processing into cocoa crumb at the company’s factory at Marlbrook, near Hereford. The final stage of transformation into the iconic Dairy Milk still takes place at the famous Bournville plant.
I asked my hosts whether Britons’ consumption of chocolate had been hit by the recession. They told me that the market was remarkably resilient and last year had been a record one for production at Chirk.
It seems that when people need cheering up, they indulge in a bar of chocolate. And who can blame them? Napoleon did much the same with champagne: “In victory we deserve it; in defeat we need it.”
