Kiwi feathers ruffled by chocolate change

He was born at Queen Mary Maternity Hospital, grew up at Green Island and went to primary school in Caversham.

Now Mark Callaghan has Cadbury's top job in Australia and New Zealand, lives in Melbourne and finds himself frequently trying to explain the Kiwi psyche to his Australian colleagues.

"I've had a hell of a hard time over here defending my countrymen," Mr Callaghan, Cadbury's Australia-New Zealand managing director, told the Otago Daily Times as he reviewed a difficult year.

In May, the company created a furore in New Zealand by introducing palm oil to its chocolate and then, in August another minor furore by introducing softer Minties sweets.

Mr Callaghan said he did not change the Minties formula, only the way the sweets were made, causing them to feel "a little different".

"And you know what? It got on the front pages of the newspapers. Do you know what my Aussie colleagues were telling me about Kiwis at that point? `You guys are nutso. Get a life. Was it a bad news day or what?' So I've had a hell of a hard time over here."

Mr Callaghan, who has worked in New Zealand, Australia and Britain, believes New Zealanders are resistant to change.

"We come from a small country where lots of things are going against us and we take a lot of this change quite personally.

"The way I like to look at myself and my colleagues in New Zealand is that we are a very balanced lot. We have two massive chips on each shoulder."

Mr Callaghan estimated changing Cadbury's chocolate recipe to include palm oil and then changing it back again in the face of public dissatisfaction, cost the company millions of dollars.

"I don't have a figure. It's not something I was ever going to want to go and look up. But it's certainly millions of dollars."

Mr Callaghan said the decision to use palm oil was a response to increased costs, including a doubling of cocoa prices over two years.

He said two factors drove up the price of cocoa.

One was competition for cocoa from United States investment funds moving out of the sharemarket and into commodity markets during the recession, and the other was increased demand for chocolate as the recession bit.

The result was a "massive impact" on Cadbury's profitability.