YORK confectionery giant Nestlé has hit back at criticism of its Fairtrade KitKats.

The company was hailed last December by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, and the Fairtrade Foundation when it announced that its four finger KitKats were to become Fairtrade.

David Rennie, managing director of Nestlé Confectionery, said more than 6,000 farmers on the Ivory Coast would benefit from the move.

But a national newspaper claimed yesterday that while KitKats might have the Fairtrade stamp, experts had claimed that chocolate from different sources was mixed up in the supply chain before the bars were produced.

It claimed this meant there was no sure way of telling that the bar bought by a person contained Fairtrade cocoa, bought for a fair price from poor farmers, and consumers were being misled.

But a Nestlé spokesman insisted the company worked to Fairtrade’s standards. “When you buy a Fair-trade KitKat you can be sure it directly benefits Fairtrade cocoa farmers,” he said.

“We have a huge £65 million investment programme to help farmers increase their income, improve education and healthcare and plant 12 million new cocoa trees over the next ten years.

“It’s fantastic that KitKat Four Finger is Fairtrade – an important part of our overall programme. With Fairtrade, we’ve developed a direct relationship with the Kavokiva co-op in the Cote d’Ivoire, one of the poorest countries in the world.”

The row comes days after a report from a free-market thinktank claimed that multinational companies such as Nestlé did more for developing-world coffee farmers than the Fairtrade Foundation.

Describing Fairtrade as costly, opaque and substantially unproven, the 130-page report commissioned by the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) said Fairtrade requirements on farmers might well reflect the subjective views of western consumers and not the real needs of poor producers.

But the Fairtrade Foundation said the report was a “flawed, partial analysis,” adding it was wrong to suggest Fairtrade did not offer a long-term strategy for development.