Ferrero has suspended production at the world’s largest Nutella factory in France due to a quality issue with an ingredient, the Italian confectioner announced today (21 February).
The site in Villers-Écalles, Normandy, has temporarily shut down as a precautionary measure while the company investigates the matter, which arose on Tuesday evening.
“After reading the results of one of the quality checks at our Villers-Écalles factory, we noticed a quality defect in one of the semi-finished products used in the manufacturing of our products Nutella and Kinder Bueno,” Ferrero said.
“This defect doesn’t meet our quality standards, so we’ve made the decision to temporarily suspend production at the factory.”
Ferrero added that no product already on the market was affected by the situation, and supply to customers continued uninterrupted.
The results of the confectionery giant’s investigation are expected by the end of the week.
The plant in France’s Seine-Maritime department is responsible for around a third of the world’s Nutella, producing 600,000 jars of the hazelnut-chocolate spread every day.
Chocolate spread is the UK’s second fastest-growing spread after peanut butter, with value up 5.9% in grocery to £73.6m on volumes up 3.7% [Kantar Worldpanel 52 w/e 7 October 2018].
Nutella has added 4.9% of value to £49.3m on volumes up 1.2%, although Mars’ Maltesers spread and Cadbury have both suffered decline in value and volumes [Nielsen 52 w/e 8 September]. Own label is doing well, however, up 9.4% in value and 14.2% in volume [Kantar].
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