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  20/10/2022 | Industry, Trade

Barry Callebaut’s Wieze chocolate factory back to normal capacity

Barry Callebaut announced today that the cleaning of its factory in Wieze, Belgium, is nearing completion and, as a result, is back to operating at normal capacity.  

Peter Boone, CEO of Barry Callebaut Group, commented: “I would like to express my deepest gratitude to our customers for their understanding during this difficult period, and to all our employees who worked tirelessly for weeks to get the Wieze factory up and running again.”

According to the company, food safety is paramount for the group and this was a very exceptional incident. Not only does Barry Callebaut have a food safety charter and procedure in place, but also over 230 colleagues working on food safety and quality in Europe and over 650 worldwide. At the site in Wieze, employees are trained to recognize food safety risks. This allowed the teams to quickly identify the risk, complete the root cause analysis and start the cleaning process.

Barry Callebaut detected a salmonella-positive chocolate production lot at its Wieze factory in Belgium on June 27, 2022. On June 29, 2022, a lecithin batch from a supplier was identified as the root cause and Barry Callebaut halted all chocolate production lines at the factory as a precautionary measure, which prevented affected chocolate products from entering the retail market.

barry-callebaut.com