“All production has been stopped,” Laurence Evrard, a spokeswoman for the Italian food giant, told AFP on Thursday“.
She explained that the factory is “not closed” and that the employees’ salaries are “100 percent covered.”“.
“We will continue to clean up for the next two weeks or so“.
In a statement posted on July 6 on its website, Ferrero announced the temporary closure, starting from last week, of “part of the production lines” after salmonella was detected during “enhanced checks” carried out by its teams..
The company did not intend at that time to stop production completely.
The group stressed that the suspension of manufacturing is a precautionary measure, while specifying that “any final product did not register a positive result,” in the context of contamination checks..
In April 2022 Ferrero was forced to stop production in Arlon and recall all products manufactured on site after dozens of cases of salmonella potentially linked to the consumption of chocolate products were reported in several European countries. No deaths have been reported.
After the Belgian health authorities put the Arlon plant under close scrutiny, it finally received, in September, the final go-ahead to restart it under normal conditions..
The Italian giant had to carry out major cleaning operations, invest in new pipes and run hundreds of quality tests before resuming production.
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