The bratwurst must be trembling as Twistees, Malta’s most popular snack, is set to enter the German market in two months’ time.

Producing 35,000 packets a day, Darrell Lea occupies over 30 per cent of the local market share. It exports Twistees to the Middle East and the UK, where the product has been rebranded as Tastees.

“Twistees has kept its position in the market – maybe it’s because today’s adults started eating them when they were kids,” company chairman Ray Calleja said.

“This is a childhood dream come true,” said Finance Minister Tonio Fenech as he toured the Marsa factory with Malta Enterprise chairman Alan Camilleri on Thursday. “I don’t know anyone in Malta and Gozo who doesn’t like Twistees,” the minister said.

He said the company was another good example of a local enterprise that was entering the export market but in the case of Twistees, he said, one felt a sense of pride as it was something that was quintessentially Maltese.

The well-loved cheesy snack is made by heating up rice, passing it through an oven “where it is baked, not fried”, and then passed through a mixture which gives the snack its unmistakeable flavour.

It is then immediately put in packs and boxed. The Darrell Lea factory also produces the snack in chicken, smokey barbecue and lite variants, as well as Tastees (essentially bacon-flavoured Twistees), Pom Poms and Jungle Sticks.