Starting next year the iconic purple Cadbury chocolate blocks will no longer carry the Fairtrade logo on its packaging.
A change in partnership between Mondelez International-owned Cadbury Australia and Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand will result in the Fairtrade logo being replaced by a new Cocoa Life logo.
The Cocoa Life brand is reportedly owned by Mondelez, but also in partnership with Fairtrade.
The project is worth $400 million, that Cadbury said aims to assist farmers through project efforts and assist in making Cadbury accountable for its cocoa farmers, Smartcompany reported.
Cadbury has said that this new program will be similar to the Fairtrade program, adding that the Fairtrade Foundation will continue on as regular partner.
Fairtrade Australia and New Zealand boss Molly Harriss Olsen said it would have been preferable for Cadbury to have stuck with the Fairtrade brand.
“Cadbury Dairy Milk will not be Fairtrade certified in the traditional sense. It will be a new partnership, a different sort of partnership,” she told News.com.au.
Queensland University of Technology retail expert Gary Mortimer said the challenge for Cadbury will be to convince shoppers.
“Corporate social responsibility practices are expensive to implement, because businesses are often dealing with external third parties,” he said.
“We’re seeing businesses now bring those costs internally by setting their own benchmarks and monitoring systems. There’s nothing wrong with that as long as the internal benchmarks could be equal to or similar to the standards, but the challenge they’ll face is consumer sentiments.”
While Cadbury chocolate will remain certified throughout 2017, it is expected that by May 2018, the Fairtrade logo will have been removed from all Cadbury packaging in both Australia and New Zealand and be replaced by the Cocoa Life logo.