Who owns Cadbury?

Cadbury is owned by Mondelez International, an American snacks company headquartered in Chicago and listed on the Nasdaq. It has been foreign owned since Kraft bought it in 2010, and no, Kraft Heinz is not the owner, which I will untangle below because the company formerly known as Kraft split in two and the names have confused people ever since.

This is the one people half know already. Most people remember there was a takeover and that it was controversial. The details of why it was controversial are worth the retelling though, because Cadbury is the takeover that was considered so badly handled it changed British takeover law.

Is Cadbury owned by Kraft?

Sort of, and this is where the names get silly.

Kraft bought Cadbury in 2010. Then in 2012 Kraft split itself into two separate companies: the global snacks business, which kept Cadbury and renamed itself Mondelez International, and the North American grocery business, which kept the Kraft name. That grocery company later merged with Heinz in 2015 to become Kraft Heinz, which makes ketchup and Philadelphia and has nothing to do with Cadbury.

So the company that bought Cadbury does still own it, it just changed its name to Mondelez along the way. If you see "Kraft owns Cadbury" written anywhere, it is twelve years out of date, and if you see "Kraft Heinz owns Cadbury" it was never true.

What happened with the factory promise?

This is the reason the takeover is still remembered, and it changed the rules for every takeover since.

During its hostile bid in 2009, Kraft said it believed it could keep Cadbury's Somerdale factory at Keynsham, near Bristol, open. Cadbury had already planned to close it and move production to a new plant in Poland, and Kraft's suggestion that it could reverse that was part of its pitch. Within about a week of completing the deal in February 2010, Kraft confirmed the factory would close after all, with around 400 jobs going and the Polish move going ahead as Cadbury had planned.

The Takeover Panel, which polices UK deals, publicly criticised Kraft for making a statement it did not have a proper basis for. The episode fed directly into reforms of the UK Takeover Code in 2011, which tightened the rules on what bidders can promise during a bid and how they are held to it. Very few individual takeovers get a rule change named after the mess they made. This one did.

Is Cadbury still British?

The chocolate mostly is, the company is not, and there are two details in this section that surprise people.

The Bournville factory in Birmingham still makes Dairy Milk, on the site George and Richard Cadbury built in 1879, in the model village their Quaker family constructed for the workers, famously without a pub. Mondelez has kept investing in the site, so "they shut Bournville" is not true, though some production has moved to Poland over the years. The decisions, the strategy and the profits sit in Chicago, and in a year like 2024, when cocoa prices rose around 160%, it was Mondelez in Chicago deciding how much smaller and more expensive the bars got.

The first surprising detail: if you have ever had Cadbury chocolate in America and thought it tasted wrong, that is because it is not made by Cadbury. Hershey has held the licence to make Cadbury products for the US market since 1988, to its own recipes, and in 2015 it settled a legal fight that stopped imports of the British-made stuff into the US almost entirely.

The second: Cadbury held a royal warrant continuously from 1854, granted by Queen Victoria, until December 2024, when it was left off King Charles's renewed list. A hundred and seventy years, ended quietly with an unrenewed listing.

How did Cadbury end up like this?

A Quaker grocer's shop that became the most famous name in British chocolate and then a line in an American portfolio. In order:

1824. John Cadbury opens a shop on Bull Street in Birmingham selling drinking chocolate, among other things.
1825. His sons Richard and George open the Bournville factory outside Birmingham, then build the village around it for the workers.
1826. Cadbury merges with Schweppes and spends four decades as Cadbury Schweppes.
1827. The drinks business is demerged and Cadbury becomes a standalone listed company again, which lasts less than two years.
1828. Kraft completes its hostile takeover, valuing Cadbury at about £11.9 billion. The Somerdale closure follows within days.
1829. Kraft splits in two. The snacks half, renamed Mondelez International, keeps Cadbury.
1830. Dairy Milk's Fairtrade certification, which it had carried since 2009, is replaced by Mondelez's own in-house scheme, Cocoa Life, with the Fairtrade Foundation staying involved as a partner of it.
1831. Cadbury turns 200, and in the same year loses the royal warrant it had held since 1854.

Where can I buy chocolate that isn't Cadbury?

Independent chocolatiers, and this is a category where independents are genuinely doing something different rather than a dearer version of the same bar.

None of this is a comment on whether Dairy Milk tastes good, which is between you and your own childhood. The point of these pages is that ownership is a fact you can check rather than something you can guess from the branding, and Cadbury's branding is about as British as branding gets while its ownership has been in Illinois for over a decade. If you would rather your chocolate money went to someone who owns their own shop, that is what we built Highstreett for, and everything on it has had its ownership checked against Companies House first.

Questions people ask

Does Kraft Heinz own Cadbury? No, and it never has. The Kraft that bought Cadbury in 2010 split in 2012, and Cadbury went with the half that became Mondelez. Kraft Heinz is the other half merged with Heinz.

Why does American Cadbury taste different? Because Hershey makes it. Hershey has licensed the Cadbury name for the US since 1988 and uses its own recipes, and since a 2015 settlement the British-made bars are largely blocked from import.

Is Cadbury still made at Bournville? Yes, the Birmingham site still produces Dairy Milk and Mondelez has continued investing in it, though some production has moved to Poland since the takeover era.

Is Cadbury Fairtrade? Not any more. Dairy Milk carried Fairtrade certification from 2009 until 2016, when Mondelez replaced it with its own Cocoa Life programme, which the Fairtrade Foundation partners on but does not certify in the same way.

Is Mondelez American? Yes, headquartered in Chicago and listed on the Nasdaq, with brands including Oreo, Ritz, Milka and Toblerone alongside Cadbury.

How do I check who owns a chocolate brand myself? Search the company on Companies House and read the persons with significant control register, which is free. With a brand this size you will be walking up through several holding companies before you reach Illinois, but the trail is all public.

Last checked 15 August 2026. If Mondelez ever does to Cadbury what Coca-Cola tried to do to Costa, this page will need updating, so if you spot something out of date email alex@digitalhighstreett.com and I will fix it.