Mondelez International, Inc. often stylized as Mondelēz, is an American multinational confectionery, food, holding and beverage and snack food company based in Chicago. Mondelez has an annual revenue of about $26 billion and operates in approximately 160 countries. It ranked No. 108 in the 2021 Fortune 500 list of the largest United States corporations by total revenue.
The company has its origins as Kraft Foods Inc. which was founded in Chicago in 1923. The present enterprise was established in 2012 when Kraft Foods was renamed Mondelez and retained its snack food business, while its grocery business was spun off to a new company called Kraft Foods Group. The name is derived from the Latin word mundus ("world") and delez, a fanciful modification of the word "delicious."
The Mondelez International company manufactures chocolate, cookies, biscuits, gum, confectionery, and powdered beverages. Mondelez International's portfolio includes several billion-dollar components. These components includes cookie and cracker brands Belvita, Chips Ahoy!, Oreo, Ritz, TUC, Triscuit, LU, Club Social, Sour Patch Kids, Barny, and Peek Freans; chocolate brands Milka, Côte d'Or, Toblerone, Cadbury, Green & Black's, Freia, Marabou, Fry's, and Lacta; gum and cough drop brands Trident, Dentyne, Chiclets, Halls, and Stride; as well as Tate's Bake Shop cookies and powdered beverage brand Tang.
Deforestation
In September 2017, an investigation conducted by NGO Mighty Earth found that a large amount of the cocoa used in chocolate produced by Mondelez and other major chocolate companies was grown illegally in national parks and other protected areas in Ivory Coast and Ghana. The countries are the world's two largest cocoa producers.
The report documents how in several national parks and other protected areas, 90% or more of the land mass has been converted to cocoa. Less than four percent of Ivory Coast remains densely forested, and the chocolate companies' laissez-faire approach to sourcing has driven extensive deforestation in Ghana as well. In Ivory Coast, deforestation has pushed chimpanzees into just a few small pockets, and reduced the country's elephant population from several hundred thousand to about 200–400. While Mondelez claimed to have mapped almost all of its cocoa suppliers in Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Indonesia by 2018 in an effort to combat deforestation. Mondelez received a 'yellow', the second of the four possible ratings on the 2022 Chocolate Scorecard for Agroforestry i.e. 'starting to implement good policies'. In November 2018, an investigation by Greenpeace International found that 22 palm oil suppliers to Mondelez International cleared over 70,000 hectares (170,000 acres) of rainforest from 2015 to 2017.
