Cadbury Factory Codes

If you look for the date stamp on your Cadbury product, you should also see one of the following three letter codes to designate where the product was manufactured:

Cadbury's became Cadbury in 2003, beginning the process of dishonouring the brand's fine history. An ill-fated attempt to market everything under the Dairy Milk brand followed, resulting in the deletion of such superb bars as the Wispa and the Caramel. Other bars, such as Fuse, Snow Flake, and Spira, were also deleted. Although Wispa was brought back due to popular demand, many bars are still missing from the shelves.

Cadbury UK lost its Royal Warrant in December 2024, but as of November 2025 I still found it on Cadbury products. The company does not seem to care that it keeps sliding further down people's perception. Once it was quite classy; purple foil wrapped the products and most Britons would not dispute that it was the best milk chocolate in the world. Now it is a cheap product. In 20 years they have successfully trashed it all the way down to a budget brand.

The purpose of this page is not to comment on the taste characteristics of the many different Cadbury Dairy Milk products from around the world. Being made from some natural ingredients, such as milk, the taste of any chocolate bar can vary, even when it was made in the same factory in the same year. My own memories of how Cadbury's Dairy Milk tasted in England during the late 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, will always form the basis for how I judge the taste today. Back then, the products did not taste waxy, the sugar did not sting my teeth, and the milkiness was forefront. Today, whether I try Canadian or British Cadbury Dairy Milk, it simply does not taste the same as I remember. Often it may be creamy, but the specific milky taste is gone. I can rarely taste much cocoa and the sweetness is overbearing; the sugar will sting my teeth and gums - this requires a gulp of warm tea and a swish around! Canadian Dairy Milk, which I found very tasty at one point, has taken a big dive in recent years. It tastes like a sickly block of candle wax and the strength of the sweetness is overbearing. Since Mars and Nestlé no longer sell a milk chocolate in Canada, and Hershey has stopped selling its creamier Canadian version, there is no decent mass-market milk chocolate left to buy. The Hershey bars available in Canada now taste the same as the American versions.

I obviously couldn't resist talking about the taste characteristics after all! For more, simply search around. There are countless forum and news group posts containing people's discussions of the declining quality.

Last updated 3 December 2025.