American firm Kraft, who finalised their takeover bid of Cadbury last week, have confirmed they plan to shut the Somerdale plant by 2011.

Cadbury announced in 2007 that it planned to close Somerdale and transfer work to Poland.

Commenting on the announcement, Irene Rosenfeld, Chairman and CEO, Kraft Foods, said: 

"In our recent talks with Cadbury senior management, it became clear that it is unrealistic to reverse the closure programme, despite our original intent to do so.    While this is a difficult decision, we have moved quickly to end any further uncertainty." 

She continued, "We remain committed to investing in growing our combined business in the UK and will continue to support Cadbury's existing £30 million investment plans for the Bournville site. During the next six months we are conducting a strategic review of our combined manufacturing network. We continue to believe that the combination of Kraft Foods and Cadbury will accelerate growth to the long term benefit of our employees."

But the announcement has provoked anger from Unite Union officals who are accusing Kraft of stringing workers along with empty promises about trying to save their jobs.

Unite spokesperson Jennie Fornby said:

"They repeatedly made the assertion they would keep the site throughout the bid and they raised the hopes of many hundreds of decent men and women in Keynsham and in the Keynsham community.  I think that was highly cynical, I think that they had plenty of information to know that they weren't going to be able to do that, but of course they were trying to win approval for what was an incredibly unpopular bid"

She added she thought this was the end of the road in the fight to save workers' jobs:

"I can't see that anything now can change this decision. Of course we'll be speaking to Kraft, should they ever do the decent thing and respond to out requests for a meeting. But I have to say I hold out very little hope".

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