German sweets maker Haribo plans to invest around €300 million ($326 million) in a new plant at Neuss in the western state of North Rhine Westphalia to produce its Maoam brand of chewy sweets, business daily Handelsblatt reported on Monday.
The company is in talks with the municipality over the purchase of a 14-hectare site, equivalent to 20 football fields, for the new plant, which will then replace the smaller plant currently operating in the town. Construction is planned to start in 2025, with production launched in 2028.
The details emerged from a Handelsblatt interview with Haribo operations head Markus Riegelein.
Haribo was unable to meet demand for Maoam from its current Neuss production plant, and room for expansion was lacking, Riegelein said. The staff complement is set to rise to 450 from 350 currently.
The new plant, some five kilometres away from the old, is also to produce fruit gums.
Haribo drew criticism when it closed its plant in the eastern state of Saxony in 2020, where 120 workers were employed.
Riegelein noted that wage and energy costs were high in Germany, and there were many rules for manufacturing companies. He added that: "These are challenges that we accept." He also said that conditions elsewhere were unstable and that competitive production in Germany remained possible.
Founded in Bonn in 1922, Haribo is well known for its trademark "gummy bears" – gelatine-based jelly babies. Initially a liquorice producer, Maoam began producing its chewy fruit sweets in the early 1930s. It was bought out by Haribo in 1986.
Based in Grafschaft to the south of Bonn since 2018, Haribo employs a total of 7,000 people, 3,000 of them in Germany. It maintains production sites in Grafschaft, Bonn, Neuss and Solingen.