Chestnuts for sweets Records broken at Haribo swap
Grafschaft · At seven o’clock on Friday morning in the municipality of Grafschaft it was time for the annual exchange of acorns and chestnuts for sweets.
Even before sunrise, queues had formed outside the Haribo building and long traffic jams often built up on the access road. Trucks had problems reaching the local companies in Grafschaft. As consolation, they were given a bag of products from the new factory by the confectionery group. Haribo had previously sent notices to the local residents to make them aware of potential problems.
The Ringen industrial estate around Haribo was highly congested in places. The problem is that there is only one access road to the area. However, the traffic jams that had formed in the morning at the motorway exit to the Innovation Park and at the Ringen junction had quickly dissolved. More than 70 Haribo employees were deployed to ensure that everything went smoothly.
Nevertheless, in the bright sunshine, there was an ever-increasing queue of people. Hundreds of Haribo fans queued closely behind one other in order to weigh their hoards. Despite long waiting times, the mood was good and there were satisfied faces all around. Perhaps also because the weather was so good. Company spokesman Sven Jacobsen reported late in the morning: “We already have 65 tons of chestnuts! A new record seems to be in the offing.”
Last year, a total of 80 tons were delivered over two days. By the evening this amount had long since been exceeded. And today, Saturday, the swap will continue until 2pm. The mammoth exchange campaign was launched by Haribo in 1936. In recent years, an average of 10,000 collectors have each delivered more than 200 tons of chestnuts to the factory. In exchange for the collections, there are gummy bears, confection and licorice at a ratio of 10:1 for chestnuts and 5:1 for acorns.
Original text: frv
Translation: Caroline Payne
