Italian group Ferrero announces a 95 million euro investment for its Normandy sites

A €95 million investment for its Normandy site in Villers-Écalles (Seine-Maritime). This is the investment announced by the Italian group Ferrero this Friday, May 16, ahead of the Choose France summit , which will bring together major foreign business leaders at the initiative of the President of the Republic.

According to Le Figaro , the biscuit and candy giant wants to build two new storage warehouses and modernize its mega-manufacturing plant located near Rouen. A region where a quarter of the world's Nutella production is produced, with 600,000 jars of this spread produced each day. The Villers-Écalles factory also produces 2.5 million Kinder Bueno bars daily, making it the third-largest manufacturing site for this candy in the world.

Of this €95 million, €30 million will be dedicated to modernizing and greening the Villers-Ecalles factory, where the family group had already invested €40 million in 2022 to increase production of its Kinder Bueno, according to the national daily. The company announced that this sum will be used to replace certain equipment on the production lines and to complete the complete insulation of the factory.

The remainder of the budget will be used to build two brand-new logistics warehouses. The first will be in Cléon, south of Rouen, for €33 million, and the second, in Barentin, for €32 million, to speed up the storage and packaging of its products.

Ferrero has faced a surge in competition for its flagship Nutella product in recent years with the rise of brands like Bonne-Maman and Milka, Le Figaro points out. While it dominated the sector by selling 85% of the spread, it now has to settle for just under 60% of the market share. The group is trying to reinvent itself to cope. For example, it launched a Vegan Nutella at the beginning of September ( without, however, the palm oil impasse ) and a new peanut-flavored Nutella will soon arrive on the European market.

This new announcement on the edge of the Choose France summit is one of the 56 projects and "more than 15 billion euros of investments" that will have to be announced from May 19 at the eighth annual gathering of foreign business leaders in Versailles. Investments from Amazon and Microsoft, an aeronautics factory and even sites for the automotive industry will have to be revealed in what the government is promoting as a "record" edition.