The mountain range-mimicking chocolate bar Toblerone will no longer be allowed to claim its “Swiss-made” status due to a change of location in production.
Previously situated in Bern, parent company Mondelez International will move a portion of its production in Q3 of 2023 to the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. According to CNN, the triangle-shaped breakable delight will officially lose its well-known Matterhorn peak logo, which has adorned its package since 1970.
“We need to adjust our packaging to comply with Swissness legislation. We have removed our Swissness claim from the front of the Toblerone pack and changed our description ‘of Switzerland’ to ‘established in,’” the spokesperson said.
Switzerland’s 2017 Swissness Act states that national symbols and the Swiss cross must meet “Swissness” criteria for product use. The act requires that the creation, and 80 percent of the food ingredients, be in Switzerland except for the need for non-native natural products.
The company produces over 7 billion bars annually, with 97 percent of its products sent to 120 countries. It claims one Toblerone is sold every two seconds in airport duty-free shops alone.
Mondelez’s new packaging will include an image of a different mountain and “a distinctive new Toblerone typeface and logo” with the signature of founder Theodor Tobler. Tobler and cousin Emil Baumann created the chocolate bar in the early 1900s.
“Bern is an important part of our history and will continue to be so for the future,” the spokesperson shared.
