Unilever and Ferrero to team up in Europe over Kinder ice cream

Ferrero and Unilever will form a joint-venture in Europe to manufacture a range of ice creams under Ferrero’s Kinder brand.

Italian confectioner Ferrero has been making Kinder chocolate since the 1960s, and the brand is perhaps best known for its Kinder eggs – individual chocolate snacks for children featuring a small toy in the hollow centre – plus, more recently, the crisp wafer bar Kinder Bueno.

But the brand has never made a Kinder-branded ice cream product until now. The products will hark back to Kinder’s heritage, launching in Germany next year – the market where the first Kinder product was introduced 50 years ago – as well as Austria, Switzerland and France.

“The collaboration combines Ferrero’s uniqueness and creativity with Unilever’s extensive expertise in the ice cream category,” a statement issued by Unilever Deutschland read. The Anglo-Dutch company’s ice cream portfolio is vast, with well-known entities like Cornetto, Wall’s, Magnum, Carte d’Or and Ben & Jerry’s.

Kinder ice will be manufactured under the highest quality standards and contain all the ingredients that makes Kinder chocolate so distinctive, the two companies said.

The launch continues Ferrero’s recent expansion into adjacent product categories, with products such as Nutella & Go! and Nutella B-Ready capitalising on the company’s best-known brand in new formats.