US supermarket giant Walmart now selling Swiss-made chocolate

A picture of the production centre where the chocolate for Walmart is being produced — The chocolate for Walmart is produced in Coop's new production centre near Basel, named "Schoggihüsli" (Swiss-German for "little chocolate house").
(Keystone)

Swiss retailer Coop is producing bars for Walmart’s own-brand chocolate, the SonntagsZeitung reported on Sunday.

The chocolate is produced in a newly established production centre near Basel and has been available in Walmart stores since last year, confirmed Reto Conrad, head of production at Coop, to the German-language newspaper.

The amount of chocolate currently exported to the supermarket chain is still low, but Conrad said he assumes that supplies will soon grow significantly.

The chocolate packaging displays the Swiss flag and is labelled as a “Product of Switzerland”.

Big business

Walmart is a prestigious customer for Coop because the collaboration enables its chocolate to have an enormous reach within the US. Walmart currently has 5,000 stores across the country and turned over more than CHF450 billion ($486 billion) in 2017.

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Whilst the Walmart prices are low, production costs in Switzerland tend to be high. In a statement to the SonntagsZeitung, Coop confirmed that producing the chocolate was indeed relatively expensive but said that their Swiss product “targets the high-price segment at Walmart”.

The chocolate does not benefit from government subsidies, Coop said, since almost all the bars sold to Walmart contained 60% cacao and no milk. Under the Swiss “Schoggilaw” (Swiss-German for “chocolate law”), only manufacturers using milk and wheat in their chocolate products receive export subsidies, to compensate for the high cost of these agricultural ingredients.

swissinfo.ch/ln

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