Cadbury New Zealand today announced that New Zealand’s best selling chocolate, Cadbury Dairy Milk, has been given a major makeover with a fresh new pack design, showcasing its Fairtrade certification.

The new look pack also re-confirms Cadbury’s return to a cocoa butter only chocolate recipe across its entire Cadbury Dairy Milk block chocolate range, with all blocks within the new packaging containing 26% cocoa solids, (up from 21% when the recipe included palm oil).

Cadbury New Zealand Managing Director, Matthew Oldham, said the new packs have been designed to reinforce the quality and ethics that Kiwis expect of Cadbury.

“We are incredibly proud to be the first mainstream chocolate brand in New Zealand to achieve Fairtrade certification. We hope other chocolate makers follow our lead and do the right thing by committing to Fairtrade and in turn deliver real financial benefits to cocoa farmers.

“The new pack design with its gold Cadbury logo and Fairtrade label is designed to emphasise our commitment to ethical sourcing and quality ingredients. We’ve returned to a full cocoa butter recipe across our entire block chocolate range and every ingredient within our 9 plain Cadbury Dairy Milk products that can be certified Fairtrade will be Fairtrade.”

“This is a major commitment, and Fairtrade is an area where scale really does matter. We are the country’s biggest chocolate maker and in making the nation’s best selling chocolate Fairtrade we can do more good,” he said.

In its move to make New Zealand’s best selling chocolate Fairtrade, Cadbury has taken Fairtrade from niche to mainstream and in the process enabled millions of Kiwis to help Ghanaian cocoa farmers to build better lives for their communities.

Cadbury’s global commitment to Fairtrade will see more than 5.7 million blocks and bars in New Zealand and 350 million Cadbury Dairy Milk blocks and bars globally carry the Fairtrade label by the end of this year.

“Already Cadbury’s move has quadrupled the amount of Fairtrade cocoa coming out of Ghana which benefits more than 40,000 farmers – a commitment no other New Zealand chocolate maker can come close to,” said Matthew Oldham.

The new look Cadbury Dairy Milk packs will arrive on shelves this Easter. All Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate block weights will remain the same as the current packaging.

Read the full press releaseDate: 12 Feb, 2010