Andrew Darby

Tony Abbott, then opposition leader, at the Cadbury factory in Hobart during the 2013 election. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s controversial $16 million election sweetener for a Cadbury’s expansion has collapsed.

The chocolate-maker’s plan for a $66 million-plus visitor centre at the Hobart home of Dairy Milk, using the taxpayer cash, has been ditched.

Parent company Mondelez International dismissed a suggestion the money had become an embarrassment, saying instead that after 18 months of discussion, the visitor centre failed to meet grant criteria.

The grant criteria required us to be growing volumes about 20 per cent on site, but today we don’t have that kind of volume increase available to us from confirmed export orders, said Mondelez Australia managing director, Amanda Banfield.

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Mr Abbott’s decision to offer the cash during the 2013 election campaign was greeted with disbelief, when a short time later he failed to support Victorian fruit packer SPC Ardmona.

In 2014, opposition industry spokesman Anthony Albanese found via a freedom of information request that Cadbury’s was yet to formally put a business case, despite an earlier claim by the government that a strong case had been made.

It appears to be a different thing for different ministers at different times, Mr Albanese told the ABC.

It was also revealed that Alistair Furnival, the staffer dumped from working in the office of Assistant Health Minister Fiona Nash, previously helped lobby the Tasmanian government to secure funds for Cadbury.

Doubts about the strength of the application emerged last August when senior Tasmanian Coalition senator Eric Abetz warned that if a business case did not stack up, the government may have to reconsider.

In response, Cadbury’s outlined plans for the visitor centre, saying a design was being prepared in collaboration with Tasmanian tourism developer Simon Currant.

A conversation was also under way with the nearby tourism sensation, the Museum of Old and New Art.

The economic benefit if you have two great tourism facilities in the northern suburbs of Hobart is going to be quite amazing for Tasmania, Mondelez corporate affairs manager Simon Talbot said.

Mrs Banfield stood outside the plant on Thursday to tell reporters the company was unable on its own to build the visitor centre, which was claimed to bring an additional 300 jobs.

The challenge with the visitor centre was that it required significant additional funding, Mrs Banfield said. At the moment we have a long-standing investment in our core manufacturing.

She said that under this program, a further $20 million would be spent on building the business, which makes over 150 million Family Blocks of Dairy Milk chocolate each year.