CHOCOLATE WARS
From Cadbury to Kraft
200 Years of Sweet Success and Bitter Rivalries
Deborah Cadbury
Harper Press, $39.99, pbk
We in Dunedin, home of the Cadbury confectionery factory, should have special interest in this wide-ranging, detailed history of the rise, and recent fall, of a British enterprise that, while existing to make money, also considered the welfare of its workers and of the wider community to be equally important.
After John Cadbury arrived in London in the early 19th century to study a new commodity, the cocoa bean, his two sons, Richard and George - Quakers, like their father - spent long days on the road selling their cocoa to reluctant grocers and returning to their Birmingham warehouse to pack the orders themselves if hands were lacking.
The author, a historian and member of the milk chocolate family, is meticulous in sketching the travails which beset the Cadburys as they set about building a cocoa and chocolate conglomerate that eventually girdled the world.
For the brothers, in the Quaker tradition, the idea of material success for its own sake was abhorrent. They were determined to use their growing business in a way that was compatible with enlarging the riches of human experience.
Thus came into being, in 1879, the Bournville works outside Birmingham. Beyond them, a large field was set aside for the men to play cricket and football. There was a garden for the women, complete with swings and seats, and plans for shady pathways and other contrivances for outdoor enjoyment.
As the title suggests, though the emphasis is on the successes and travails of the Cadbury family, the author has plumbed deeply into the competitive activities of a host of other cocoa, chocolate and confectionery enterprises. The detail the author has mined is truly impressive, if often somewhat hard to absorb.
Fast-forward to the present day: Cadbury may exist in name but it is Kraft which holds the reins of power. Unite, the British trade union representing Cadbury employees, is concerned that up to 10,000 jobs in Cadbury worldwide could be at long-term risk. The union claims that in the past 10 years Kraft, its home turf in the US, has shed some 60,000 workers to help pay for similar deals which won it Cadbury - a figure Kraft denies.
Former Cadbury Schweppes chairman Sir Dominic Cadbury commented: "One day you had the Cadbury company, the next day you didn't. Gone. One hundred and eighty years of history down the tube, and I would argue 180 years of being a beacon of good practice. Something very precious got lost that day. Gone. And it was so easy."
Deborah Cadbury asks: "Will Kraft act for the betterment of the world - not just the top management? Will it be a tangible force for good in our global village? It is difficult not to feel sceptical. And that is why, despite all the benefits of globalisation and the excitement of giant takeovers, it is hard not to believe that something irreplaceable and immeasurable in the neat columns of a balance sheet has been discarded as effortlessly as a sweet wrapper."
Chocolate Wars has many illustrations, some of them in colour.
• Clarke Isaacs is a former chief of staff of the Otago Daily Times.
