Tasmania smiles as Cadbury invests $30 million in its Claremont site

Tasmania’s largest exporter by value, Cadbury, has announced an aspirational goal to increase its production from 42000 to 70000 tonnes/year. A recently announced $30 million investment into Cadbury’s Claremont facility in Hobart will help the company realise its goal.

Back in 2008, Cadbury invested around $135 million in Australia and New Zealand to develop three sites into ‘Centres of Excellence’.  In Australia, the Claremont site was to specialise in producing moulded chocolate blocks and Ringwood was to concentrate on chocolate bars, while in NZ, Dunedin was to focus on manufacturing boxed assortments.

It was hoped that this specialisation would bring the economies of scale to each site and justify the upgrading of a chocolate moulding plant for Claremont and boxing machinery for Dunedin. All plants automated their packaging systems.

Cadbury now claims a 51% share of the Australian and New Zealand chocolate block market and its Claremont site employs around 600 people directly and 350 indirectly.

The decision to invest more into this site is good news for the local community and also good news for Tasmanian dairy farmers who supply the milk to the plant.