The Ferrero factory in Arlon, Belgium, which was exposed to salmonella contamination last year in its Kinder chocolate products, was forced to stop production after the discovery of this bacteria at the end of June.
“All production is suspended,” Laurence Evrard, a spokeswoman for the Italian food giant, told AFP on Thursday.
She explained that the factory is “not closed” and that the employees’ salaries are “100 percent covered”.
“We’ll continue to clean for about the next two weeks,” Evrard added.
In a statement posted July 6 on its website, Ferrero announced the temporary closure, starting last week, of “part of the production lines” after salmonella was detected during “enhanced checks” carried out by its teams.
The company did not intend at that time to stop production completely.
The group stressed that the suspension of manufacturing is a precautionary measure, while specifying that “any final product did not register a positive result” in the context of contamination checks.
In April 2022 Ferrero was forced to stop production in Arlon and recall all products manufactured on site after dozens of cases of salmonella potentially linked to the consumption of chocolate products were reported in several European countries. No deaths have been reported.
After the Belgian health authorities put the Arlon plant under close scrutiny, it finally received, in September, the final go-ahead to restart it under normal conditions.
The Italian giant had to carry out major cleaning operations, invest in new pipes and run hundreds of quality tests before resuming production.
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2023-07-13 22:17:40
