Only one of these chocolate-covered pineapple marshallow sweets will be made in New Zealand from next month.

Pineapple Lumps are the last chocolates being made at Dunedin's about-to-close Cadbury factory.

The final day is likely to be about March 29. After that, Pascall's Pineapple Lumps will be made in Australia and shipped back to New Zealand.

What happens to those historic and last Kiwi-made Pineapple Lumps to come off the line?

Wilma McCorkindale Cadbury's Dunedin factory, which is owned by Mondelez, finishes production at the end of March. Its equipment is being taken to Australia.

Mondelez, the company that owns the factory, says it will leave that up to the factory workers.

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Spokesman Jake Hatton said staff had continued to "work incredibly hard and deliver amazing performance results" despite the closure announcement.

Marion van Dijk Pineapple lumps are as Kiwi as a kiwi.

"So it's only appropriate for them to decide."

Now the factory is only making pineapple lumps. Of the 130 staff still there, 30 are involved in production while the rest are decommissioning the site and machinery.

Meanwhile, just up the road at Oamaru, competitor Rainbow Confectionery, is eyeing a market where it will be the only Kiwi maker of chocolate-covered chewy pineapple marshmallow.

Rainbow calls them Pineapple Chunks, and history is on its side in arguments over authenticity.

The sweet was invented in Oamaru about 65 years ago in the very factory Rainbow uses now.

They were called Chunks for a decade before the name was changed to Lumps - it was thought to be catchier.

Cadbury's got hold of the lumps name and sells them under the Pascalls brand.

Rainbow competes with the original Chunks name. It sells two versions, an original Chunk and a Chunk with 15 per cent pineapple juice sold under the Regina brand.

Regina was the name of the company back in the early 1950s when confectionery chef Charles Diver came up with the idea of small bites of choccie-covered pineapple marshmallow.

Rainbow general manager Brent Baillie said whether sales jumped or not depended on consumers.

"If consumers support locally manufactured New Zealand-made profits, jobs and products, then yes we might [see sales climb]."

He said there were taste differences between Chunks and Lumps.

"We get some people preferring ours and we get some people preferring Cadbury. Some people think their's tastes more artificial."

But the Rainbow Chunk "was always based on the original recipe. It hasn't changed".

* The Cadbury World visitor attraction will continue to operate at the Dunedin factory after chocolate production finishes.