Chestnuts for gummy bears Haribo to hold its annual exchange: chestnuts for sweets
Grafschaft · Haribo has been doing this for 83 years now: Every fall, people can bring in chestnuts and acorns, and receive sweets in exchange. It’s that time again to start collecting.
Chestnuts and acorns for gummy bears and other sweets: For the 83rd time, Haribo starts its mammoth exchange campaign. Originally organized for children in 1936, the collecting and weighing of chestnuts is now an annual event for both young and old. On Friday and Saturday, October 11 and 12, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m., countless families and individuals will once again be making their way to the Haribo site in Grafschaft. They will come with wagons, laundry baskets, buckets and sacks full of chestnuts and place them on the golden gummy bear scales.
The confectionery maker, which moved from Bonn to the municipality of Grafschaft in 2018, is certain that there will once again be a great turnout. For the third time after 2017 - when the new factory was not yet officially opened - the festive weighing will take place in Grafschaft's Innovation Park. Last autumn in particular, long queues formed. Waiting times of up to four hours had to be anticipated. Some of the queues were a good 700 meters long. In 2009, the record year so far, 260 tons of chestnuts and 150 tons of acorns were handed over by more than 20,000 collectors. This year, 70 Haribo employees will once again be on hand to supervise the exchange.
The fruits of the forest are weighed and then exchanged for pre-packaged Haribo products at a ratio of 10:1 (chestnuts) and 5:1 (acorns) according to the number of kilograms. Only chestnuts and acorns without shells will be accepted, the company said. The chestnuts must be separated from the acorns for weighing. The chestnuts and acorns are then donated to animal and game parks in Germany and Austria for feeding during the winter season.
Haribo was founded around 100 years ago in the Bonn district of Kessenich. A backyard kitchen grew into a global enterprise. The confectionary group has been the world market leader in the gummy bear and licorice market for decades.
(Orig. text: Victor Francke; Translation: ck)
