Two hundred jobs are being stripped out of Cadbury’s flagship Bourneville factory as managers beg for investment money from the firm’s US owners.

Bosses suggested they need to make the site more “cost competitive” to secure a £75 million investment from executives at Illinois-based Mondelez International.

The news comes after workers were sent a document last autumn in which bosses threatened to move jobs overseas if workers did not “demonstrate a new set of behaviours.”

The job losses are expected to be covered by voluntary redundancies, with workers reportedly receiving “payments averaging £100,000, depending on length of service,” according to the Greater Birmingham Chambers of Commerce.

Workers at the historic Bourneville plant, created as a model village by the Quaker Cadbury brothers in the 19th century, are represented by general union Unite.