Who Owns Cadbury?
Cadbury is owned by Mondelez International, the American snacks group, and has been since Kraft’s hostile takeover completed in 2010. The Companies House chain runs all the way to the US parent. It also holds a detail almost nobody has noticed: Cadbury plc still exists — and on 18 August 2026, three weeks before this page was checked, it was renamed Vantas International Limited, retiring the Cadbury name from the company that once was Cadbury. Ownership verified 6 September 2026.
Who owns the Cadbury brand?
The chocolate is made by CADBURY UK LIMITED (00155256), incorporated 19 May 1919 and still registered at Bournville Place, Bournville, Birmingham — the model village the Cadbury family built around the factory. It traded as Cadbury Limited until 2 October 2007.
Its person with significant control is Kraft Foods Investment Holdings UK Limited, holding 75% or more of shares and votes. That entry is new: it was notified on 5 August 2026, replacing Kraft Foods UK IP & Production Holdings Limited, which ceased the same day. That is a reshuffle inside the group, not a sale — the owner above is unchanged.
Parent company and ultimate owner
The chain recorded at Companies House:
- Cadbury UK Limited (00155256) — the chocolate business
- Kraft Foods Investment Holdings UK Limited (07577802) — notified 5 August 2026
- Vantas International Limited (06497379) — formerly Cadbury plc
- Chromium Acquisitions Limited (07036171) — incorporated 5 October 2009
- Mondelez International, Inc — Virginia, United States, company number 0550179, notified 23 November 2016
This is a chain that finishes properly. Unlike the private equity structures elsewhere on this site, where the trail ends in a statement that nobody is registrable, Cadbury’s register names its ultimate owner outright: a US corporation, identified by its home-state registration number.
Brand owner vs operating company
Cadbury UK Limited makes and sells the chocolate. The companies above it hold shares and intellectual property and trade nothing.
Their names are the fossil record of the takeover. Chromium Acquisitions Limited and its sibling Chromium Assets Limited were both incorporated on 5 October 2009 — during Kraft’s pursuit of Cadbury, weeks after the approach became public and months before the bid succeeded. Bid vehicles are given deliberately anonymous codenames, and seventeen years later “Chromium” is still there, sitting between Cadbury and Chicago.
The Kraft Foods names are equally out of date. Kraft split in 2012, with the snacks business — including Cadbury — becoming Mondelez International, but the UK holding companies incorporated in March 2011 still carry the Kraft name. Company names on the register are not evidence of who owns what today.
When the ownership changed
Cadbury was an independent British public company until Kraft Foods won a hostile takeover in early 2010, at a price reported at around £11.5bn — a bid opposed by the board, by unions and by members of the Cadbury family, and followed by the closure of the Somerdale factory that Kraft had said it would keep open.
The register records what happened to the acquired company itself:
- CADBURY PLC — 7 February 2008 to 4 June 2010
- CADBURY LIMITED — 4 June 2010 to 18 August 2026
- VANTAS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED — from 18 August 2026
Four months after the takeover it stopped being a plc. Sixteen years after that, last month, it stopped being called Cadbury at all. The chocolate company keeps the name; the company that was Cadbury no longer does.
Related brands in the same group
Mondelez owns Oreo, Milka, Toblerone, Ritz, belVita, Philadelphia and Green & Black’s alongside Cadbury. Within Cadbury sit Dairy Milk, Wispa, Twirl, Creme Egg, Flake and Roses.
Two long-standing confusions are worth clearing up. Cadbury Schweppes demerged its drinks business in 2008, so Schweppes has had nothing to do with Cadbury for eighteen years. And Kraft Heinz — the company that owns Heinz — is a different company from Mondelez; both descend from the old Kraft, but only Mondelez owns Cadbury.
Sources and verification
Every company number, notification date and previous name above is from the Companies House register and can be checked step by step to Mondelez International, Inc.
The limits: the £11.5bn takeover value is a reported figure, not a filing, and Mondelez’s own shareholders are disclosed through US securities filings rather than Companies House. The 5 August 2026 and 18 August 2026 entries are recent, so anyone rechecking this page should look at the register again rather than assume the structure has settled. Companies House does not verify most filed information.
Sources and verification
Ownership last verified .