BRUSSELS - (AFP) - The giant Swiss factory "Barry Calpo" in Belgium for chocolate products, which ranks the largest in the world, resumed production on Monday after a six-week hiatus due to contamination with salmonella bacteria, the group announced.

And company spokesman Cornel Warlop told AFP that three out of 24 production lines have been restarted in Ouise (northwest of Brussels), adding that disinfection operations are continuing in the other lines.

"In the coming weeks, we will be able to operate more production lines to return to the normal level of production. However, we remain cautious because this process is unprecedented, as the cleaning and disinfection process takes a long time," he said in a statement.

The presence of the bacteria was discovered at the end of June at the company's Belgian factory in the Weiss region.
As a result, the group immediately stopped production at its factory, reported the matter to the health authorities, and contacted all of its customers.

Quality experts have identified lecithin as a source of contamination.

The Swiss group provides chocolate products to giant companies in the food industry such as Hershey Mondelez, Nestlé and Unilever, as well as to biscuit factories, artisans and confectioners.

The preparations can be used to manufacture chocolate bars as well as beverages, biscuits and flavorings in ice cream or bakery products. Therefore, products go through several stages before reaching consumers.

The monitoring of salmonella in this factory comes a few weeks after the discovery of contamination with this bacteria in products of the "Kinder" company inside a factory belonging to the Italian Ferrero group in Arlon, western Belgium.

Bari Calpo, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, is the world's leading manufacturer of cocoa and chocolate. It had an annual turnover of 7.2 billion Swiss francs for the 2020/2021 fiscal year (ending August 31) with a net profit of 384.5 million Swiss francs. Its sales amounted to 2.2 million tons.