KitKat lovers can eat happy in the knowledge that the chocolate bar will not be downsized to cut Brexit-related costs.

Dame Fiona Kendrick, Nestlé’s boss in the UK and Ireland, said the four-fingered version of the much-loved biscuit bar would not be reduced to three to lower costs.

“Not while I’m sitting here as chairman and CEO [chief executive],” she told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

In November, the makers of Toblerone outraged fans by revealing plans to widen the gaps between the chocolate bar’s triangular chunks in an effort to avoid raising its prices. Mondelez International said higher costs for ingredients meant it was cutting the weight of two bars in Toblerone’s UK range. It has reduced 400g bars to 360g and 170g bars to 150g to maintain retail prices.

Kendrick said Nestlé would do all it could to absorb any price rises internally before passing them on to customers. “We want to make sure that Nestlé does everything it can to try and save costs and to ensure that we absorb as much as possible ourselves,” she said, adding that the company would not take risks with well-loved brands for the sake of short-term cost increases.

“We will look at every single opportunity to try and take costs out before we put pricing through and we will do that in a very responsible way. We’ve got fantastic, iconic brands and we’re not going to obviously do anything short-term in order to manage the immediate cost issues there.”

The pound has fallen sharply against other major currencies since the Brexit vote in June, making imports more expensive and driving up costs for UK manufacturers which buy raw materials and ingredients from abroad. The pound is down 17% against the dollar at about $1.23.

Economists including those at the Bank of England have said higher costs will increasingly feed through into consumer price inflation in 2017. The headline inflation rate is expected to rise to about 3% next year from a current level of 1.2%.