About 12 tonnes, or 413,793 bars, of KitKat chocolate have been stolen from a shipment belonging to Nestle after leaving its production site in Italy earlier this week for Poland.
The company, based in Vevey, Switzerland, says that “the vehicle and its load are still nowhere to be found”.
The shipment of the the crunchy bars, made of waffles covered with chocolate, disappeared while en route between production and distribution locations, and was meant to be distributed across Europe.
Nestle says that while they appreciate the criminals’ exceptional taste, the fact remains that cargo theft is an escalating issue for businesses of all sizes.
They say that with more sophisticated schemes being deployed regularly, they have chosen to go public with their experience in the hope of raising awareness of this increasingly common criminal trend.
They add that the missing products could enter unofficial sales channels, but all bars can be traced using unique batch codes printed on the packaging.
They further say that consumers, retailers and wholesalers can identify whether a product is part of the stolen shipment by scanning the on-pack batch numbers, and if a match is found, instructions will be provided on how to alert the company.
Source: ABC News
