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Ritter Sport covers old packaging with stickers to meet new EU rules
🇩🇪 Germany /Economy & Trade

Ritter Sport covers old packaging with stickers to meet new EU rules

From Die Zeit · () German

Translated from German and summarized by DistantNews. Read the original for the full story.

At a glance

Newswire From a news agency New plan
  • Ritter Sport has applied stickers to existing chocolate packaging to cover its claim of 100% certified sustainable cocoa sourcing under new EU rules.
  • The company says new wrappers will retain information about certified cocoa sourcing while adding a claim that the chocolate contains no added flavors.
  • The packaging change comes as Ritter Sport faces higher cocoa, energy and packaging costs, weaker consumer demand and a planned reduction of more than one in ten jobs.

Ritter Sport is putting stickers over a slogan it used for years: “100% certified sustainable cocoa sourcing.” The Waldenbuch-based chocolate maker says the move responds to new European Union rules intended to prevent greenwashing.

The rules, known as the Empowering Consumers for the Green Transition, or EmpCo, are due to take effect at the end of September. Broad terms such as “environmentally friendly” and “sustainable” will only be allowed on packaging when companies provide detailed evidence for them.

The packaging relaunch with the new film is fully underway, but it cannot be implemented within a few months.

— Ritter Sport spokeswomanThe company explained why it is temporarily covering existing packaging with stickers.

Ritter Sport has been applying stickers to existing chocolate bars for several months. The company did not say how many packages need to be covered. Its spokeswoman said the relaunch using new film is underway, but cannot be completed within a few months. The company said it wanted to avoid destroying the old packaging materials.

As we have communicated several times, it was important to us not to destroy any packaging film.

— Ritter SportThe company said it wanted to avoid wasting existing packaging materials.

Future wrappers will carry the claim “without added flavors” on the front. The reverse will still refer to the company’s 100% certified cocoa sourcing, accompanied by the required supporting information. Ritter Sport said it generally supports measures that give consumers clearer, verifiable and specific information, but added that uncertainty over how the rules will be interpreted in different European countries creates a challenge.

The packaging dispute comes during a difficult period for the family-owned company. Ritter Sport said in April that it planned to eliminate slightly more than one in ten positions after recording a loss the previous year. It described the planned cuts as the first layoffs in its more than 110-year history. The company attributed the pressure to sharply higher raw-material costs, especially cocoa, along with rising energy and packaging prices and a marked reluctance among consumers to spend.

However, the remaining legal uncertainty in implementation and interpretation in different European countries is a challenge.

— Ritter SportThe company described its concern about applying the new EU rules across national markets.
About this summary

Originally published by Die Zeit in German. Translated, summarized, and contextualized automatically by DistantNews, with a note on how the source frames the story. Not individually reviewed before publishing. How this works.

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