At a hearing of the House of Commons' business, innovation and skills committee, a spokesman for the multinational food giant defended the company's U-turn on saving the Somerdale plant, which had already been earmarked for closure by Cadbury.
Kraft's under-fire executive vice-president Marc Firestone blamed a lack of information from Cadbury for the false promise that the company would keep the factory and save 400 jobs in the midst of the protracted takeover battle on 7 September.
As he faced a grilling from MPs investigating the food giant's controversial £10.5bn takeover of Cadbury, Firestone insisted Kraft had "acted in good faith" but did not know Cadbury had already spent tens of million of pounds on machinery for its new site in Poland.
He claimed it was impossible for Kraft to know this information as its was commercially sensitive and the two companies were not talking to each other throughout the hostile takeover.
Firestone was respresenting Kraft in the absence of chief executive Irene Rosenfeld, and sat alongside Trevor Bond, president of Cadbruy Britain & Ireland and Richard Doyle, HR director of Cadbury – both of whom have secured jobs within Kraft's new operation.
Bond backed Firestone's stance, adding: "We were in a hostile takeover and if we gave information we would had have been in breach of takeover rules."
Questioned why Kraft couldn't unearth this information itself, despite MPs believing it was already in the public domain, Firestone countered: "We did Google it."
He said: "We did not have until January, access to new information that meant we would not be able to keep Somerdale open."
During today's committee meeting, Kraft pledged there would be no more compulsory reduncancies or factory closures in the UK for at least two years.
.jpg)
.jpg)