Ferrero Group

Ferrero is a private multinational manufacturer of branded chocolate and confectionery products. Founded and headquartered in Alba, Piedmont, Italy, Ferrero’s best-known brands include Nutella, Ferrero Rocher, Kinder, and Tic Tac. Family owned since its inception, Ferrero is among the top confectionery companies in the world alongside Mondelēz International, Nestlé SA, Hershey Co., and Mars, Inc.

Origins (1940s)

Ferrero’s story began amid the privation of wartime scarcity. At the end of World War II, Pietro Ferrero—then a small-time pastry-maker and confectioner in Alba, in Italy’s northwestern Piedmont region—experimented with a chocolate-hazelnut blend that compensated for the high cost and limited availability of cocoa by relying on locally sourced hazelnuts. Ferrero’s mixture not only helped define Piedmont’s distinctive chocolate tradition, but also established the base formula that would shape many of Ferrero’s later products, including the early precursors to Nutella and Ferrero Rocher.

By the end of the war, chocolate had become prohibitively expensive across Italy and much of Europe due to shortages and high import costs, making chocolate products unaffordable for most households. Ferrero turned to the Piedmont region’s plentiful, inexpensive hazelnuts and gianduja, a 19th-century Turin invention that blended chocolate with hazelnut paste. His solution was simple and strategic: reduce the chocolate content of gianduja and increase the hazelnuts, thereby lowering production costs and creating a more affordable chocolate-based product.

Instead of producing solid confectionery bars, Ferrero reimagined the traditional gianduja as a dense, loaf-shaped paste he called Pasta Gianduja. Though not yet the smooth, spreadable product that would become Supercrema Gianduja (the precursor to Nutella), it quickly gained traction as an affordable and commercially viable treat in postwar Italy.

To capitalize on the product’s demand, Pietro and his brother, Giovanni Ferrero Sr. (a food wholesaler) formalized their growing enterprise by founding the Ferrero company in 1946. While Pietro remained the creative culinary mind behind their products, Giovanni Sr. oversaw product distribution, eventually creating a local supply network that supported the company’s early regional growth.

Ferrero’s more spreadable Supercrema Gianduja, invented in 1951, would become Ferrero’s first major product that was manufactured in industrial rather than artisanal batches, allowing the company to scale beyond Alba into Northern Italy. 

In 1949, just a year into the company’s expansion, Pietro Ferrero, its culinary founder and main creative force, died of a heart attack at the age of 51. His wife, Piera Cillario, and brother Giovanni Sr. assumed leadership and maintained continuity of Pietro’s formulas and vision. Pietro’s son, Michele Ferrero, also joined the business; after Giovanni Sr.’s death in 1957, Michele would guide the company’s transformation into a major global brand.

By the end of the decade, Ferrero had invested in larger production facilities and more advanced machinery and expanded its distribution networks to cover all regions of Italy. The company had transformed from a large pastry operation into food manufacturing, setting the stage for its eventual rise as a global confectioner.

Expansion and European foothold (1950s–1970s)

Whether through incremental improvements or larger strategic moves, Ferrero began building vertically in the 1950s, opening several company depots throughout Italy and deploying its own fleet of delivery vans. It was also during this period that the company developed its hallmark reputation for media restrictions and product secrecy.

In the early 1950s, Michele Ferrero saw an opportunity to expand into Germany as it was undergoing a rapid reconstruction, the Wirtschaftswunder (“economic miracle”). He determined that several decommissioned WWII missile plants could be repurposed for food production and, in 1956, established Ferrero’s first German factory.

The product that propelled Ferrero’s early success in the German market—and later across much of continental Europe and the United Kingdom—was Mon Chéri, a chocolate confection with cherry liqueur. Its rapid rise owed much to Ferrero’s aggressive marketing campaign, which, in an era of looser advertising regulations, promoted the confection as a high-energy, even healthy, treat. Ferrero’s German operation soon became its largest foreign manufacturing hub and the birthplace of several later international brands, including Nutella.

In 1964, Michele relaunched a slightly reformulated version of his father’s Supercrema Gianduja recipe, giving it the name Nutella. The product, an instant hit upon release, would become one of Ferrero’s most iconic products worldwide. As a spreadable product, Nutella helped move chocolate from occasional desserts or between-meal treats into everyday mealtimes. Its name—combining the descriptive “nut” with the Italian suffix “-ella”—gave it an approachable, transparent, and culturally distinct identity.

Ferrero’s next major brand introduction took place in 1968, when the company launched Kinder in both Italian and German markets. The first product was Kinder Chocolate, a chocolate bar with a dairy-based filling. The new brand was aimed at young consumers, as reflected by its name (the German word for children). Its success paved the way for a family of Kinder products, including the Kinder Surprise egg—a hollow chocolate egg with a milky filling and a plastic capsule containing a surprise toy inside—which was introduced in 1974. (Kinder Surprise has never been sold in the U.S. because its embedded toy violates food safety regulations intended to prevent choking hazards. However, in 2001 Ferrero developed a similar product—Kinder Joy—which was eventually released in the U.S. in 2017. Unlike Kinder Surprise, this new iteration places the toy in a separate half of the egg rather than embedding it inside, making it legal to sell in the U.S.)

Amid these product launches, Ferrero’s most far-reaching debut came in 1969, when its Refreshing Mints—rebranded as Tic Tac in 1970—quickly moved into major markets worldwide, including the United States, Australia, and several countries across South America and Europe. Together, the introduction of Nutella, Kinder, and Tic Tac in the 1960s and early 1970s transformed Ferrero from a strong European confectioner into a global, multi-brand competitor.

Global brand era (1980s–1990s)

For many decades, boxed chocolates had been a familiar gift item, with brands like See’s Candies, Whitman’s Sampler, and Russell Stover dominating the American market through much of the 20th century. When Ferrero introduced Ferrero Rocher in 1982, it entered this tradition with a confection that quickly distinguished itself. Initially launched in Europe and entering the U.S. market by 1988, Ferrero Rocher eventually became one of the most recognized holiday chocolates worldwide.

In addition to its distinctive blend of hazelnuts and chocolate, Ferrero Rocher’s individual gold foil wrapping conveyed a high-end, almost jewel-like aesthetic. This suggested luxury while remaining affordable, a combination that made the confection a widely accessible gift, helping secure its place in holiday traditions.

In 1990, Ferrero launched Kinder Bueno, a lighter snack bar aimed not only at children but toward a teen and adult demographic. By the end of the decade, Rocher had become the company’s global ambassador, symbolically associated with accessible luxury gifting, while Kinder Bueno represented Kinder’s expansion into a broader snacking culture.

Brand consolidation (2000–2014)

The early 2000s were a relatively quiet period for Ferrero in terms of public perception, but only when compared to the previous decades, when the company aggressively expanded and built many of its signature brands. Instead, the company focused on strengthening its existing brands, expanding not through brand creation or acquisition, but through marketing campaigns aimed at scaling its existing product lines.

One of Ferrero’s most successful promotional efforts in the early 2000s was its push to market Nutella more aggressively in the U.S. Although Nutella has been on U.S. grocery shelves since 1983, it didn’t fully resonate with American consumers until the early 2000s, when Ferrero ramped up its marketing efforts. Since then, Nutella has sold steadily among American consumers.

M&A and diversification (2015–2020)

The year 2015 marked a dramatic shift in Ferrero’s industry positioning. Long known as a relatively conservative yet steadily expanding family enterprise, the company began moving at a much faster pace—one that would transform it into an aggressive global player—when Giovanni Ferrero was named executive chair following the death of his father, Michele.

What followed was a flurry of mergers and acquisitions that would continue over the next decade. In 2015, Ferrero acquired British chocolate maker Thorntons, and in 2017, U.S. confectionery manufacturer Fannie May. These two acquisitions signaled a turning point as Ferrero pivoted from decades of organic growth to scaling through strategic deals. In that same year, Ferrero also acquired Ferrara Candy Company, a major U.S. manufacturer known for brands such as Trolli, Brach’s, and Lemonheads. The deal gave Ferrero a substantial foothold in the American non-chocolate confectionery market and expanded its presence in gummies, seasonal candies, and sugar-based treats. Ferrara—by then a Ferrero subsidiary—would later play a central role in integrating the Nestlé U.S. confectionery brands acquired in 2018.

By the late 2010s, Ferrero had planted firm roots in the U.K. and U.S. markets, setting the stage for even larger moves. In 2018, Ferrero purchased Nestlé’s entire U.S. candy portfolio, gaining the rights to more than 20 of Nestlé’s top-selling brands including Butterfinger, Crunch, Nerds, and SweeTarts. In 2019, as Kellogg’s sought to exit the cookie business, it sold its Keebler, Famous Amos, and Mother’s Cookies brands, along with Little Brownie Bakers (a bakery licensed to manufacture Girl Scout Cookies) to Ferrero.

The following year, Ferrero capped its expansion with two U.K. acquisitions: Eat Natural, a growing player in the healthy snacks market, and Fox’s Biscuits, a long-standing British biscuit manufacturer. Together, these deals did more than expand Ferrero’s catalog. They gave the company a substantial manufacturing base, further diversified its offerings, and secured control over a major share of American chocolate and non-chocolate brands. By 2020, Ferrero had recast itself as a global snacks-and-sweets giant.

Building a modern snack conglomerate (2021–2025)

In 2020, as many companies were straining under the pressures of COVID-19 lockdowns and severe supply chain disruptions, Ferrero continued to post sales growth. The company then entered another period of accelerated acquisition. In 2021, Ferrero acquired U.K.–based Burton’s Biscuits, adding brands such as Maryland Cookies and Jammie Dodgers. The following year, it purchased both Dublin-based protein bar maker Fulfil Holdings Ltd. and Wells Enterprises, a family-owned American ice cream manufacturer known for Blue Bunny and Bomb Pop.

These acquisitions marked Ferrero’s move into high-growth consumer categories—healthy snacks, protein bars, and ice cream—and broadened its presence well beyond traditional confectionery. The company also invested heavily in U.S. manufacturing. In 2024 it opened its first American chocolate factory in Bloomington, Illinois, where it produces chocolate for Ferrero’s flagship and acquired brands, including Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Butterfinger, and Crunch, for distribution in the U.S. market.

In 2025, Ferrero completed its $3.1 billion acquisition of WK Kellogg Co., the North American cereal business created by the 2023 Kellogg’s split. The deal marked a significant step into the breakfast cereal category and underscored Ferrero’s broader shift toward becoming a diversified snacks-and-sweets conglomerate.

Taken together, these moves show a consistent pattern in Ferrero’s history: establishing manufacturing footholds in strategically important markets, building global brands, and expanding into new categories that complement its core confectionery strengths.