Dove Ice Cream Bars are packaged on the Mars factory in Burr Ridge, Illinois.
source: mars
Candy giant Mars is trying to make a reputation for itself in a recent category: ice cream.
The family-owned company goals to reach $1 billion in global ice cream sales by 2030. In May, Mars hired CEO Anton Vincent to lead its global ice cream business, complementing his existing role as president of Mars Wrigley North America.
Mars faces stiff competition to achieve its ambitions in the US, but the corporate is investing in this business. It spent $50 million to upgrade its ice cream factory in Burr Ridge, Illinois, and committed a further $20 million to a facility that has yet to be spent.
Mars can also be expanding its portfolio with recent flavors corresponding to M&M’s Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches and Twix Cookie Dough Ice Cream. It used its $5 billion acquisition of Kind North America, best known for its nut bars, for inclusion in plant-based ice cream substitutes.
While summer remains to be the most important selling season for ice cream, Mars can also be looking to boost business in the autumn and winter through a partnership between the National Football League and its Snickers Ice Cream Bar.
Mars intends to increase its share of the ice cream market as a part of its extensive operations. As well as to candy and ice cream, Mars also owns a big segment of pet care products and other food brands, including Combos Stuffed Snacks and Ben’s Original Rice.
The ice cream plant paid off for the corporate. During the last five years, global sales of Mars ice cream have increased by 42%. The Dove Ice Cream brand alone grew 12% last yr. Because the segment grows, The USA accounts for greater than half of the corporate’s ice cream business.
As Mars invests resources in the ice cream industry, the corporate will discover if its well-known brands are enough to meet its ambitious $1 billion sales goal.
Mars ice cream goals vary between old and recent
Mars entered the ice cream category in 1986 when it purchased the Dove company, then known just for ice cream bars before the confectionery company expanded into chocolate. Three years later, Mars introduced the Snickers Ice Cream Bar, which is now the best-selling product in its portfolio, followed by M&M’s Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches.
“We do not have the most important ice cream brands, but we consider now we have the most important ice cream brands,” Shaf Lalani, head of Mars Ice Cream in the US, told CNBC.
According to data from Euromonitor International, Mars currently ranks among the many top 10 American ice cream producers in terms of retail sales. Nonetheless, the owner of Haagen-Dazs is much ahead of him General Mills; Parent of Ben and Jerry Unilever; and Blue Bell Creameries, which is privately owned.
“Ice Cream Brands Mars Inc. face stiff competition, removed from the highest spot in the US ice cream market,” said Carl Quash, head of food and nutrition research at Euromonitor.
In an attempt to catch up, Mars’ predominant strategy of accelerating ice cream sales focuses on reversing what it did with Dove: taking on other brands’ candies and turning them into frozen treats.
“There’s a couple of 64% percentage of people that buy our confectionery and participate in our brands, which supplies us numerous confidence that now we have the precise to win,” said Lalani.
Besides Snickers and M&M’s, other Mars candy brands are showing promise in switching to ice cream. Twix Ice Cream is the fastest growing product in the corporate’s ice cream portfolio. Lalani believes the frozen version of the Milky Way bar – known outside the US because the Mars Bar – could turn into the following big hit.
While Lalani said Mars’ existing portfolio has multiple runways, not all of Mars Ice Cream’s growth might be organic. Acquisitions can even help in selling fuels and attracting recent customers.
For instance, Kind’s frozen treats entered Whole Foods just a few months ago, adding a recent retail chain to Mars’ frozen footprint.
In December, Mars announced it was buying Tru Fru, a chocolate-coated frozen and freeze-dried fruit startup. The financial terms of the transaction weren’t disclosed.
Contained in the ice cream factory
Dove bars are factory dipped in chocolate.
source: mars
Nearly forty years ago, when Mars bought Dove, it also bought Dove’s manufacturing facility in Burr Ridge, Illinois. Today, the factory is accountable for producing all of the ice cream the corporate sells in the US, accounting for 55% of its worldwide demand.
As sales accelerated, the corporate had to invest in a sprawling facility to increase capability and capability to produce recent products corresponding to Kind’s nut-studded frozen treats. The factory has separate lines dedicated to the forms of products manufactured by Mars: sandwiches, chocolate bars and sticks.
Mars’ manufacturing process is essentially automated, with staff on standby to monitor the machines. Most of the ingredients come from other sources – ice cream mix and M&M’s from regional suppliers, peanuts from Mars roasters, and so they all come together on the Burr Ridge factory.
Nonetheless, it’s a fragile process that requires precision to balance the consistency, quality and temperature requirements of the ice cream.
For instance, Snickers ice cream bars have a layer of ice cream, the candy’s signature peanuts and caramel, and a chocolate exterior. Inside the coolness factory, the chocolate should be warm enough to melt on top of the ice cream bar, which then moves quickly on a conveyor belt through a freezing tunnel to keep the ice cream from melting.
From there, the Snickers Ice Cream Bars move past sensors that detect manufacturing errors corresponding to oversized or undersized. Snickers peanuts are sometimes the offender.
The machine quickly pushes the rejects aside, joining the gang of other rejects in a slow meltdown. The floors of the production line are covered with the chocolate ashes of people who didn’t meet Mars standards. To forestall the ice cream bars from melting, the conveyor belt must move quickly, leaving no time to correct errors.
However the ones that make the cut move down to be wrapped in Snickers wrappers. Mechanical arms use small vacuum cleaners to pick up the Snickers bars without crushing them and place them in wrappers, that are then placed in individual boxes and placed in cartons.
Latest products also mean recent production challenges. Kind’s Frozen Bars, for instance, are supposed to taste the identical with every bite, but according to Romain Lepicard, head of the Mars Ice Cream R&D team, the nut pieces had a tough time reaching that level of consistency.
The $50 million that Mars has already spent largely went to upgrades to an ice cream bar line that may produce several hundred thousand Snickers Ice Cream Bars a day. The investment has also gone towards other technological improvements, corresponding to digital screens, which is able to help the power go paperless.
Mars will spend a further $20 million to further increase the variety of ice cream bars the factory can produce. The corporate plans to invest in equipment that may help it make more Snickers ice cream bar ingredients, corresponding to caramel, in addition to other improvements to the production line’s efficiency.