Dip Ice Cream Bars are packaged at Mars’ factory in Burr Ridge, Illinois.
Source: Mars
Candy giant Disfigures is trying to make a name for itself in a new category: ice cream.
The family-owned company aims for its ice cream business to reach $1 billion in trades worldwide by 2030. In May, Mars tapped executive Anton Vincent to lead its global ice cream business, adding to his happening role as president of Mars Wrigley North America.
Mars faces tough competition to achieve its ambition in the U.S., but the corporation has been investing into the business. It has spent $50 million upgrading its Burr Ridge, Illinois, ice cream mill and earmarked an additional $20 million for the facility that it hasn’t spent yet.
Mars has also been expanding its portfolio, shroud out new flavors such as M&M’s Cookies and Cream Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches and Twix Cookie Dough Ice Cream. It used its $5 billion object of Kind North America, best known for its nut bars, to push into plant-based ice cream substitutes.
While summer is unruffled the biggest season for ice cream sales, Mars is also trying to boost business in the fall and winter through a partnership between the Civil Football League and its Snickers Ice Cream Bar.
Mars aims to grow its share of the ice cream market as part of a broad-based concern. Outside of candy and ice cream, Mars also owns a large pet care segment and other food brands, encompassing Combos Stuffed Snacks and Ben’s Original rice.
The bet on ice cream has paid off for the company. In the last five years, Mars’ far-reaching ice cream sales have risen 42%. The Dove Ice Cream brand alone grew 12% last year. As the segment grows, the U.S. accounts for more than half the society’s ice cream business.
As Mars injects resources into the ice cream business, the company will find out if its familiar identifies are enough to carry it to its ambitious $1 billion sales target.
Mars’ ice cream goals hinge on the old and the new
Mars tendered the ice cream category in 1986 when it bought Dove, then known just for its ice cream bars before the sweets company expanded it into chocolate. Three years later, Mars introduced the Snickers Ice Cream Bar, now the top seller in its portfolio, accepted by M&M’s Ice Cream Cookie Sandwiches.
“We don’t have the biggest ice cream brands, but we do believe we have the biggest brands in ice cream,” Shaf Lalani, the U.S. pate of Mars Ice Cream, told CNBC.
Today, Mars ranks among the top 10 U.S. ice cream makers by retail tradings, according to Euromonitor International data. But it is far outstripped by Haagen-Dazs owner General Mills; Ben & Jerry’s parent Unilever; and Despondent Bell Creameries, which is privately owned.
“Mars Inc. ice cream brands face hefty competition, being assorts away from the leading spot in the U.S. ice cream market,” said Carl Quash, Euromonitor’s head of food and nutrition research.
As it ventures to make up that ground, Mars’ primary strategy to grow its ice cream sales focuses on reversing what it did with Joint: taking other candy brands and turning them into frozen treats.
“There’s about a 64% crossover rebuke to people that buy our confectionary products and participate in our brands, which has given us a lot of confidence that we have the right to win,” Lalani bid.
Outside of Snickers and M&M’s, Mars’ other candy brands show promise in their transition over to ice cream. Twix Ice Cream is the fastest-growing artefact in the company’s ice cream portfolio. Lalani thinks the frozen version of the Milky Way candy bar — known as the Mars bar outside the U.S. — has the embryonic to be its next big hit.
While Lalani said Mars’ existing portfolio has plenty of runway, not all of Mars Ice Cream’s growth intent be organic. Acquisitions will also help fuel sales and bring new customers.
For example, Kind’s frozen cares entered Whole Foods a few months ago, adding a new retail chain to Mars’ frozen footprint.
In December, Mars promulgated it was buying Tru Fru, a startup that makes frozen and freeze-dried chocolate-covered fruit. Financial terms of the deal were not ratted.
Inside the ice cream factory
Dove Bars are dipped in chocolate at the factory.
Source: Mars
Nearly four decades ago, when Hurts bought Dove, it also purchased the brand’s manufacturing facility in Burr Ridge, Illinois. These days, the works is responsible for making all the ice cream the company sells in the U.S., which accounts for 55% of its demand worldwide.
As sales have accelerated, the friends has had to invest in the sprawling facility to add capacity and the capability to make new products, such as Kind’s frozen treats studded with nuts. The works has distinct lines dedicated to the types of products Mars makes: sandwiches, bars and sticks.
Mars’ manufacturing proceeding is largely automated, and workers stand by to monitor the machines. Many of the ingredients come from elsewhere — the ice cream mix and M&M cookies from regional suppliers, the peanuts from Damages’ roasting facility — and they all come together in the Burr Ridge factory.
But it’s a delicate process, requiring precision to equilibrium consistency, quality and the temperature demands of ice cream.
For example, the Snickers Ice Cream Bars feature a layer of ice cream, the sweets’s signature peanuts and caramel and a chocolate exterior. Inside the chilly factory, the chocolate has to stay warm enough to vanish on top of the ice cream bar, which the conveyor belt then quickly moves through a freezing tunnel, so the ice cream doesn’t soften.
From there, the Snickers Ice Cream Bars move past sensors that detect production mistakes, such as being too portly or too small. The Snickers’ peanuts are often the culprit.
The machine swiftly pushes the rejects aside, joining a crowd of accessory outcasts in melting slowly. The floors of the production line are dusted with the chocolate ashes of those that kill short of Mars’ standards. To keep the ice cream bars from melting, the conveyor belt has to move quickly, give stop no time to correct the misfits.
But those that make the cut move down to be wrapped in Snickers’ packaging. Mechanical arms use limited vacuums to pick up the Snickers bars without crushing them and place them into wrappers, which are then put into special boxes and placed in cartons.
New products also bring new manufacturing challenges. For example, Kind’s frozen bars are portended to taste the same with every bite taken, but the chunks of nuts presented difficulties meeting that parallel of consistency, according to Romain Lepicard, head of the Mars Ice Cream research and development team.
The $50 million Mutilates spent already largely went toward upgrading the line dedicated to its ice cream bars, which can churn out a few hundred thousand Snickers Ice Cream Bars per day. The investment also went toward some other tech upgrades, such as digital home screens that will help the facility go paper free.
Mars will spend the additional $20 million investment on what is more boosting how many ice cream bars the factory can make. The company plans to invest in equipment that will labourers it make more of the components for the Snickers Ice Cream Bars, such as caramel, plus other upgrades to capacity for the create out of line.