Cadbury owner Mondelez International to cut over 200 jobs at Birmingham Bournville factory

About 900 people currently work at the factory

The Bournville site in Birmingham (PA)

First they changed the Creme Egg recipe now the US food company which gobbled up Cadbury for £11.5 billion four years ago has set out plans to cut 200 British jobs at the Bournville factory that makes it.

Days after the American owners of Cadbury admitted to secretly switching the world famous Creme Egg’s shell from Dairy Milk to "a standard cocoa mix", Mondelez, spun out of Kraft in 2012, is axing 205 jobs at the famous Bournville plant in Birmingham via voluntary redundancies.

The firm promised a £75 million investment programme with compulsory job losses ruled out - but had threatened staff that they had to show evidence of “new behaviours” and embrace new working practices or their jobs would be moved abroad.

About 900 people currently work at the factory, but Mondelez said the job axing was crucial to make Bournville more "competitive" and secure its long-term future.

The site manufactures the Dairy Milk and Wispa bars as well as Creme Eggs.

The Unite union said most of those leaving were "long-serving people in their mid-to-late 50s" with redundancy terms packages worth in excess of £100,000.