Germany’s Ritter Sport to Lay Off Workers for First Time in 110 Years
More than one in ten positions will be eliminated at the company's headquarters, which employs around 1,000 staff. Ritter Sport has a global workforce of approximately 1,900 people across its operations.
The company blamed the cuts on a perfect storm of soaring cocoa and raw material costs, surging energy and packaging prices, and persistently weak consumer demand. While Ritter Sport pledged to handle the redundancies in a socially responsible manner, the spokesperson did not rule out compulsory layoffs.
The financial toll is stark. Despite preliminary 2025 revenues climbing 17.7 percent year-on-year to 712 million euros — roughly 832 million dollars — the top-line growth proved insufficient to absorb the weight of runaway supply chain costs, ultimately tipping the company into the red.
Ritter Sport's predicament reflects a broader crisis gripping Germany's chocolate sector. According to the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), the price of a standard chocolate bar in Germany stood approximately 71 percent higher in March than it did in 2020, as manufacturers have progressively transferred escalating input costs onto increasingly price-sensitive consumers.
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