The Magnum Ice Cream Company’s chief executive has emphasised a priority to accelerate volume and “competitive growth” in its first full year as a separate business to Unilever.
Despite notching up a 4.2% increase in organic sales in 2025, TMICC CEO Peter ter Kulve stuck with the 3-5% growth outlook for the new year, although the top-end would exceed the current market category rate of 3-4%.
Discover B2B Marketing That Performs
Combine business intelligence and editorial excellence to reach engaged professionals across 36 leading media platforms.
Addressing analysts today (12 February) on his first full-year results call since the December split from the FMCG giant and subsequent stock-market listings, ter Kulve said innovation, particularly around premiumisation, better-for-you and portion control, will be the drivers of volume growth.
“The ice-cream category has got a little bit stuck in nostalgia and creamy indulgence, and we are clear on the opportunity of bringing modern snacking and refreshment benefits to the category,” ter Kulve said.
“Over the last 18 months, we have relaunched 80% of our core products and have invested in better ingredients and formulations.”
Examples in the pipeline include the launch of “hydration” ice cream, protein propositions and options incorporating “nascent sugar replacement technology”, he said.
US Tariffs are shifting - will you react or anticipate?
Don’t let policy changes catch you off guard. Stay proactive with real-time data and expert analysis.
By GlobalDataTMICC has already reduced what ter Kulve called “SKU complexity” to put resources behind “productive innovations”.
Volume/mix grew 1.5% last year, although reported revenue came in flat at €7.9bn ($9.3bn).
TMICC took pricing of 2.6% to head off what CFO Abhijit Bhattacharya described as “massive commodity headwinds”, namely cocoa.
Ter Kulve said: “It was a year of operational and strategic progress and delivery against a challenging macroeconomic climate and serious headwinds from commodity inflation.
“To build on the volume growth in 2024 we made the decision to price competitively across brands and geography to enable volume growth. Despite this intense cost inflation in the year, we also right-priced our portfolio in several geographies and corrected trade margins in China and South East Asia.
“These actions were geared towards getting our business fundamentals in the right shape, and it worked.”
TMICC has launched a €500m productivity initiative, which the CEO said aims to “reset our supply chain and structural cost base”.
He added: “This gives us the full fuel to reinvest behind our brands, capability and leadership through disruptive innovation, increased demand creation and best in-class, digitised execution.”
Of the €500m, €250m was already delivered last year.
“We took the decision to invest behind the competitiveness of the business and get this volume engine going for the second year,” the CEO said.
Leading the volume sales growth was the AMEA region, which notched up a 4.5% increase, with organic sales rising 10.9% to €2bn.
Volume in the Europe and ANZ segment climbed 1.2% as organic sales rose 3.3% to €3.2bn. Americas’ volumes were flat but with sales up 0.8% at €2.8bn.
CFO Bhattacharya noted the Unilever ice-cream businesses in India, Indonesia and Portugal did not transfer over in the December separation, suggesting benefits to volumes and sales in the new year.
“Subsequent to that date, we’ve had the Indonesia business transferred to our company,” Bhattacharya said.
“We have secured the necessary permissions for the listing of the Indian business, and it will be listed in the stock exchange in India by around the middle of this month, which is earlier than planned. We then expect to acquire the Indian business in the first half of this year, subject to regulatory approvals.”
Portugal is expected to come on board in the first half, he added.
Ter Kulve emphasised the opportunities in India.
“India is already the largest dairy market in the world. It would not surprise me that in 20 years, India is the largest ice-cream market in the world, surpassing the US. We are lucky that we have a very good position in India from which to build but it was not a very successful business over the last 20 years. Basically, it lost a lot of share [but] we’re in a turnaround mode.”
