Ferrero S.p.A., together with its subsidiaries, manufactures and markets chocolates and chocolate products, bakery products, snacks, spreads, mints, and drinks in Italy and internationally.
The company was founded in 1946 and is based in Alba, Italy. It has locations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Puerto Rico, the United States, South Africa and Cameroon, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, the United Arab Emirates, and Australia.
Products
In addition to Nutella, Ferrero produces many other products, including the chocolates Ferrero Rocher, Pocket Coffee, Mon Chéri, Giotto, Confetteria Raffaello coconut cream candy, and the tic tac breath mints. A dark chocolate version of the Ferrero Rocher is also available, called the Ferrero Rondnoir, which contains a pearl of dark chocolate in the center instead of a hazelnut, chocolate cream instead of Nutella and cruchy chocolate bits instead of crushed hazelnuts.
There is also a coconut version, Confetteria Raffaello, which contains milk cream surrounding an almond and covered with meringue and shredded coconut. The Ferrero Prestige collection is a set of three: Rocher, Rondnoir, and a coconut version called Garden Coco. The Garden Coco candy is similar to Confetteria Raffaello, but has coconut cream instead of milk cream.
Ferrero also produces the Kinder product series, including Kinder Surprise (also known as "Kinder Eggs"), Fiesta Ferrero, Kinder Chocolate bars, Kinder Happy Hippo, Kinder Maxi, Kinder Délice and Kinder Bueno. Hanuta chocolate hazelnut filled wafers are also produced by Ferrero.
Business
The Ferrero Group comprises of seventy-two affiliated companies, including thirty-eight business units, fifteen production plants and three social enterprises, and its products are taken up by more than one hundred outlet markets.
Headed by Giovanni Ferrero as Chief Executive Officer, the Group closed the 2011 operating year with a consolidated turnover of 7,218 million Euro, representing an increase of 9.1% over the previous year. Operating results were particularly good in Russia, the U.S. and Brazil. The operating result for the Group as a whole, with an EBT of 856 million Euro, down 4.1% over the previous year, on the other hand, reflects an extremely difficult economic situation at international level, in the presence of high financial volatility affecting all countries the world over.
The average number of people employed in 2010/11 was 21,913 units, well in keeping with the employment level during the previous year (21.736 units).
In the course of the year ended on 31 August 2011, the Group made new investments amounting to 382 million Euro (5.3% of turnover), and 350 million of this amount was spent to strengthen the Group’s production activities. Besides the constant contributions to innovation, research and development, further investments were made in the fields of energy and environmental sustainability at Ferrero production sites in Italy, Germany, Poland and Belgium. The Group carried on its initiatives for the development of some of the poorest areas in the world according to the Ferrero Social Enterprises program.