Kraft get smooth over Cadbury's

As any lover of cream cheese knows, Phily is smooth stuff. So it should be no surprise that their media operation is like velvet. Even so, today took the biscuit.

I was called to meet Kraft's UK Chief Exec, Nick Bunker, in Cheltenham. Some 600 people work at the US food giant's British HQ in the town, so no surprise there. Mr Bunker runs Kenco coffee, Philadelphia and Dairylea cheese, a host of biscuits and a few chocolate brands, notably Terry's of York.

But I'm told to head for Cheltenham's 'Open Doors' project, where Mr Bunker will be making ham sandwiches for down and outs.

Now before you get too cynical, Kraft have been supporting this charity for 20 years, and today thousands of staff were out, like him, volunteering. Still, he didn't have to choose today to meet journalists like me and talk about Cadbury's did he?

Here he is then, reassuring the people of Keynsham that their chocolate factory would be safe in his hands:

Kraft, of course, is in the middle of a delicate takeover operation, its multinational hand poised over the Cadbury chocolate box. The details are all here, but suffice to say Cadbury's aren't interested.

Normally this would be seen in Whitehall as "US giant circles much-loved homegrown Quaker family business". But Kraft got off to a flying start, as I remarked at the time, by offering out of the blue to save the Keynsham factory that Cadbury's have earmarked for closure.

Since then, the takeover panel has set a deadline for Kraft to put up or shut up. By 9 November, they must either formalise an offer or withdraw. It will be up to investors, of course, to decide if the price is right. But what about the mood music?

That's where my little tete a tete today comes in.

With takeover lawyers breathing down his neck, there is little Nick can tell me about the deal. He repeated the commitment made by Irene Rosenfield, his company's CEO, to keep the Keynsham factory open. I asked him how - when Cadbury's have insisted they must move to Poland - Kraft could make any money there.

"Its important we don't get ahead of ourselves," he soothes, "but our statement is very clear, it's about growth and it's about investment."

Do we believe him? Well, for evidence he points to his old company, Terry's and its famous chocolate orange. Kraft bought the famous stocking-filler in 1994, and persisted with its ancient York factory for 13 years. Eventually, he sighs, the plant was just too old and too big - they were using one floor out of four - and production moved, you guessed it, to Poland.

But here's the thing. Nick Bunker is adamant he is "passionate about brands", and that "he respects the heritage of much loved national chocolate brands", like Terry's and Toblerone and Milka. I ask him if a chocolate orange made in Poland and owned by a US conglomerate is in any sense still British. Oh yes, he soothes again, as warm and comforting as a soft-centred Belgian truffle. The brand is utterly British.

Intriguing, this battle. We'll find out in the next month if Kraft are going to put their money where their smooth-tongued talk is. And then the Keynsham chocolate workers will discover if Kraft are soft-centred, or hard as a Crunchie.