CADBURY COMPANY CASE STUDY
Cadbury Company is a confectionery company, which its headquarters is based in Uxbridge in London, and the company has different branches in more than 50 countries around the globe. The rise of Cadbury has begun in 1824, the old John Cadbury started to produce and sell tea, coffee and drinking chocolate at Bull Street, Birmingham in England. Later on, he went into cocoa production of various cocoa and drinking chocolates, his factory was in Bridge Street. There after, his brother Benjamin became his business partner, and they formed a new company which named as “Cadbury Brothers of Birmingham”. In 1854, the Cadbury brothers opened a new office in London, and were granted by Queen Victoria as the authorized manufacturers of chocolate and cocoa to the Royal family. Due to the increasing popularity of their expanded product line, this includes “Cadbury’s Cocoa Essence. And, because of the great demand of Cadbury products in the market, the Cadbury brothers decided to hire the master confectioner Frederic Kinchelman to help them out to make recipes and production secrets to improve further the taste of assorted chocolate products they manufactured.
Furthermore, in 1861, John Cadbury’s sons took over his post, Richard and George found another location in 1878, in order to improve their transportation of their dairy and milk product ingredients. They bought a Bournbrook estate near Birmingham Canal. The land comprised of 14.5 acres, and just located next to Stirchley, Road railway station. A year later, they constructed the Bourneville factory. Subsequently, in 1893, George Cadbury had bought 120 acres estate, near the Bourneville factory, and there, he built 313 cottages and houses, and all the people residing in the place bought tea, coffee and cocoa from them. In the succeeding years, Cadbury was able to launch Dairy Milk Bar, and became the best selling chocolate product in 1913. Then, Fruit & Nut was also made 1n 1928; followed by Whole Nut in 1933; among other popular chocolate products that were introduced to the market. During that time, Cadbury had become the leading brand of chocolate in United Kingdom. From then on, different expansions emerged in various countries worldwide, as a proof that the Cadbury Company has been supreme brand of chocolate in the whole world.
Correspondingly, in March 2008, demerger took place in the company, the Cadbury beverage business was separated from the confectionery products. In October 2007, Cadbury factory in Somerdale, Keynsham, had been closed. It caused great unemployment for the almost 700 workers, since the factory was transferred to England and Poland. In the following year, other factories were also closed, it was the Monkhill Confectionery, along with Pontefract, and Cleckheaton and York factories located near in Chesterfield were all sold to Tangerine Confectionery for 58 million euro. In February 2010, Kraft Foods finally took over the Cadbury’s management; which caused the immediate resignation of the three high ranking officials of Cadbury Company; they were Chairman Roger Carr, Chief Executive Tod Stitzer and Chief Financial Officer Andrew Bonfield. Following the Kraft’s take over, more numbers of factories were for closure. However, as part of the deal, Kraft promised to keep the Cadbury headquarters, Hall’s and other chocolate brands; along with two plants in Skarbimierz.
At present, Kraft Foods is currently facing challenges in undergoing dramatic transition in Cadbury’s management. In view thereof, Kraft’s current business lines are primarily in beverage, cheese, grocery and convenience foods. With Kraft’s acquisition of Cadbury, there must be a need to separate aggressive productivity and overhead cost savings that the company requires, in order to meet Kraft’s new shareholder margin targets. Cadbury, itself, was also under comprehensive scrutiny with its plan to increase its margins after the acquisition of Kraft, and its existing senior management team was requesting for more supply chain innovation. Two senior managers, one from Kraft and one from Cadbury, have been focusing their joint effort to consolidate an aggressive plan and marketing strategies to meet their timetable for the manufacturing and distribution network of the new Cadbury management. Obviously, with the present of Kraft management, Cadbury is now having a solid backbone system. Moreover, another positive note comes from Reuters press report that the combination of the two companies will absolutely make a solid player in chocolate and confectionery industry that will provide tremendous revenues to the new management. But, before this vision will materialize, the new management of Cadbury Company should focus first on the tailored new company policies, vision, mission, goals and objectives that they want to pursue in the Cadbury organization in the near future.
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