Ateca, population around 2,200, is a small town in Aragon and is most famous for its chocolate factory producing the ‘Huesitos’ chocolate-wafer bar.
The Hueso family opened the factory in 1862. In the 1950’s, the factory began to struggle and was rescued by the entrepreneur Francisco Unzurrunzaga and in 1975 he came up with the ‘Huesitos’ bar and everything in the garden was rosy.
In the late 1980’s, the factory was taken over by Cadbury-Schweppes. In 2010, Kraft Foods took over Cadbury-Schweppes and now, in 2013, it has been announced that the factory, employing over 100 people, will be shut down and production moved to Poland, apparently a more efficient facility.
The closure of the factory is not the result of bankruptcy, as is mostly the case in recent times due to the financial crisis, but one purely of relocation of production. It still means job losses, something that Spain hardly needs any more of at the moment, but it is reported that the owners will provide a ‘good’ severance pay and not the legal minimum provided under an ERE redundancy declaration.