Production is gradually resuming after a six-week shutdown at Swiss giant Barry Callebaut’s Belgian factory. Three production lines out of 24 have been restarted in Wieze (north-west of Brussels) and the first delivery, liquid chocolate, will take place this Monday. This was stated on Monday by Korneel Warlop, a spokesman for Swiss chocolate maker Barry Callebaut.

It added that clean-up operations were continuing on the other lines following salmonella contamination that had brought production to a complete halt at the end of June. “In the coming weeks, we will be able to release more production lines to return to a normal level of production. However, we remain cautious as this operation is unprecedented as the cleaning and sanitation process takes a long time,” he said. . he said in a statement.

The presence of the bacteria detected at the end of June

The presence of the bacteria was detected in late June in a batch produced at Wieze and lecithin was the source of the contamination, according to the factory which immediately stopped production and blocked all products produced after June 25. The Swiss group had indicated that no contaminated chocolate had reached consumers.

Barry Callebaut supplies chocolate preparations to food industry giants such as Hershey, Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, as well as biscuit factories, artisans and professional pastry chefs. The Wieze plant employs around 600 people.

The Federal Agency for Food Chain Safety “continues to monitor the resumption of production by Barry Callebaut, which must ensure that consumers and client companies are protected from any risk,” said a spokesman.

Headquartered in Zurich, the group is a world leader in cocoa and chocolate preparations. Its annual turnover amounted to 7.2 billion Swiss francs for the staggered fiscal year 2020/2021 (ending August 31) with a net profit of 384.5 million francs. Its sales volumes amounted to 2.2 million tons.