NESTL has invested £200 million in its York factory over the last decade and has no intention of writing off such an investment.

York MP Hugh Bayley says that was the strongly reassuring message he received from the company's UK boss Peter Blackburn during a meeting earlier this week.

The meeting was pre-arranged before the furore erupted last week over the potential threat posed to York jobs by the strong pound and the subsequent loss of exports.

The MP said the Nestl UK chairman and chief executive stressed there was "no threat whatsoever" to the York factory.

He had obviously had concerns about the loss of exports to Nestl's Hamburg factory, but had said that the pound was now moving in the right direction.

"He said Nestl had put £200 million into York in the last ten years and that wasn't something they would write off."

The York factory was the company's biggest anywhere in the world and was absolutely central to the company's business.

Mr Bayley added that Mr Blackburn had been pleased with the Evening Press' "balanced and fair" coverage of the situation at Nestl, in contrast with some other publications which he felt had totally misrepresented matters.

The MP also revealed that Agriculture Secretary Nick Brown would be visiting the York factory tomorrow in a visit arranged long before last week's controversy over the pound erupted.

A Nestl UK spokesman said today that Peter Blackburn had enjoyed a "positive" meeting with Hugh Bayley, during which he had confirmed that Kit Kat jobs at York were "not presently under threat".

But he had also emphasised that Nestl Rowntree had lost several thousand tonnes of exports because sister companies in Spain, Portugal and Italy had imported cheaper Kit Kat from the Nestl factory in Hamburg instead of York. But the success of Kit Kat Chunky had offset any lost export volumes.