Toblerone Is No Longer Swiss
The iconic chocolate is no longer Swiss enough.
Toblerone bars, which are sold in more than 100 countries, will no longer be labelled as Swiss chocolate due to the US owner of the brand, Mondelez, moving some of the production outside Switzerland. As a result, the iconic Matterhorn mountain will also be removed from the packaging.
The changes are necessary to comply with Switzerland’s Swissness Act, which prohibits the use of national symbols and the Swiss cross on products that do not meet the Swissness criteria. This legislation requires that food products claiming to be “Swiss-made” must have at least 80% of their raw materials sourced from Switzerland and must be processed in the country, with some exceptions.
Mondelez has adjusted the packaging by removing the Swissness claim from the front of the Toblerone pack and changing the description “of Switzerland” to “established in.” The new packaging includes a new Toblerone typeface and logo and the signature of Theodor Tobler, who created the chocolate bar in 1908 with his cousin Emil Baumann.
The Swiss government implemented the Swissness legislation in 2017 to protect the value of the Swiss label, which can represent up to 20% of the sale price of certain products and up to 50% for luxury items compared to similar goods from other countries.