Côte d'Or (brand)
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| Product type | Confectionery |
|---|---|
| Owner | Mondelēz International |
| Country | Belgium |
| Introduced | 1883 |
| Markets | Worldwide |
| Website | www |
Côte d'Or is a producer of Belgian chocolate, owned by Mondelēz International. Côte d'Or was founded in 1883 by Charles Neuhaus, a chocolate manufacturer who used the name Côte d'Or (pseudo French for Gold Coast ) referring to the old name of contemporary Ghana, the source of many of the cacao beans used in chocolate manufacturing.
Côte d'Or was purchased by Jacobs Suchard in 1987; Jacobs Suchard in turn was purchased by Kraft General Foods in 1990, which forked off its chocolate and confectionery brands into Mondelez International in 2012, so that Mondelez is the current owner of the Côte d'Or brand.
Belgians consume 600 million Côte d'Or products a year. Every day, the Côte d'Or factory in Halle (near Brussels) used to produce 1.3 million mignonnettes (small chocolate bars) (they are now produced in Poland), and two million Chokotoffs (chocolate bonbons).
The emblem of Côte d'Or is an elephant, a symbol that recalls the African origin of the cocoa beans used in the manufacture of Côte d'Or. One source also claims that elephants were used to haul the sacks of cocoa beans. In an earlier version of the logo three pyramids and a palm tree were also featured. This logo was based on a Ghanaian post stamp, showing three icons (elephant, palm tree, pyramids) of exotic Africa.
During World War II, high-quality ingredients became unavailable. In addition, one of their factories in Marseilles, France, was destroyed during the German destruction of the Vieux Port district in early 1943. Because of this, Côte d’Or stopped producing chocolate, making room for the lower quality Congobar.
There have been continuing question marks over the ethical stance of chocolate brands worldwide. After it became public in 2001 that thousands of children were being trafficked and exploited on the cocoa farms of the Ivory Coast, Kraft, along with the rest of the industry, signed the , promising to remove the worst forms of child labour from the cocoa supply chain.
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Wikipedia