Nestlé hands over remaining ice cream activities to Froneri

Food giant Nestlé is in the process of selling its remaining ice cream activities that it manages in-house to the British ice cream producer Froneri. This involves business units in Canada, Chile, Peru, Malaysia, China, and Thailand. Thus, Nestlé is not completely out of the ice cream business, as it retains a 50% stake in Froneri. It was CEO Philipp Navratil of Nestlé who announced during the presentation of the 2025 annual figures that the Swiss company wanted to divest its remaining ice cream interests to Froneri. This quickly drew comparisons to Unilever. This company spun off its ice cream activities last year under the name of The Magnum Ice Cream Company. This Amsterdam-based company is the largest ice cream company in the world by revenue and sold ice cream worth €7.9 billion last year. Froneri is not there yet, as it generated €5.5 billion in 2024. However, the company is growing rapidly and added the Latvian FoodUnion to its portfolio last year, and now the remaining ice cream interests from Nestlé, which account for about €1.1 billion in revenue. Froneri not only has a lot of ambition but also strong capital shareholders. Nestlé has been a major shareholder since the establishment of the ice cream company in 2016, holding 50% of the shares. It also placed most of its own ice cream activities there. Following Nestlé is the French private equity investment fund PAI. Until last year, it owned the other 50%, until the investment fund ADIA from Abu Dhabi acquired part of this stake. Now Nestlé is therefore consolidating all ice cream activities under Froneri and wants to focus on four (other) main activities. This is with the aim that it continues to receive nice and growing ice cream dividends.