Cadbury loses its royal warrant after 170 years

Cadbury no longer holds a royal warrant, ending an association with the British monarchy that stretches back 170 years to the reign of Queen Victoria.

It was announced on 23 December that the Birmingham chocolate maker was not among the companies granted a royal warrant by King Charles III.

A long royal connection

Cadbury was granted its first royal warrant, as maker of chocolate and cocoa to Queen Victoria, in 1854, just 30 years after John Cadbury opened his first shop on Bull Street in Birmingham.

The company held a royal warrant from Queen Elizabeth II from 1955 to 2022, and a warrant under King Charles III was held for a further two years before being dropped.

What a royal warrant is

Royal warrants are granted to companies that supply goods or services to the Royal Household. They allow the holder to display the royal coat of arms on its products and premises, and are seen as a mark of quality and prestige.

Warrants are reviewed periodically, and companies can lose them if they no longer meet the criteria. No specific reason has been given for Cadbury not being included.

A company that has changed hands

Cadbury, founded in Birmingham in 1824, has changed a great deal since its royal association began. It merged with J. S. Fry and Sons in 1919 and with Schweppes in 1969, and was bought by the American food company Kraft Foods in 2010. It is now owned by Mondelez International.

The news comes at the end of a year in which Cadbury celebrated its 200th anniversary. In March the company unveiled a newly refurbished £350,000 archive containing more than 50,000 items from its history, and Mondelez marked the bicentenary with retro packaging for Cadbury Dairy Milk.

Still made in Bournville

Cadbury chocolate is still made at the company's factory in Bournville, in the south of Birmingham, where the Cadbury family built a model village for their workers in the late 19th century. Next door, Cadbury World remains one of the city's most popular visitor attractions.

The loss of the warrant makes no difference to how Cadbury chocolate is made, but it ends a link with the Crown that began before the company had even moved to Bournville.

Cadbury was a member of the FTSE 100 from the index's launch in 1984 until its sale to Kraft in 2010. Sir Adrian Cadbury, who chaired the company for 24 years, produced the Cadbury Report in 1992, a code of best practice that shaped corporate governance around the world.