Chocs away as Cadbury Schweppes axes 700 UK roles and ships jobs to Poland

Chocolate maker Cadbury Schweppes, will axe 700 UK jobs to reduce costs following plans to move some chocolate production to Poland.

Its plant at Keynsham near Bristol is scheduled to close by 2010, affecting 500 workers, while Cadbury will also cut 200 jobs at its plant in Bournville, Birmingham.

Cadbury said in June that it planned to shed 7,500 jobs, or 15% of its confectionery workforce.

It is also proposed that some chocolate assortment production would move from Bournville to Poland next year. The confectioner bought Warsaw-based chocolate maker Wedel in 1998.

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Trevor Bond, managing director at Cadbury said: “To continue to compete in the extremely competitive confectionery industry in the future we need to make the right decisions today.”

The Unite union accused Cadbury of behaving like an “asset-stripping private equity firm”.