Alexey Gruzdev: The ice cream market has the strongest consolidation among dairy producers

According to the speaker, the information was calculated for 50 ice cream manufacturing companies, but only 20 were included in it, almost half of the enterprises did not provide the necessary data. The threshold for entering the rating "closed" in 2020 with production volumes of 5.5 thousand tons.

‘The top 10 companies produce almost 60% of the total volume of ice cream in the Russian Federation, the top 20 companies - about 75%, the top 30 - 80%, the top 50 - 90%,’ the expert specified. ‘In total, 200 enterprises produce ice cream in the country, so the remaining 150 companies account for less than 10% of the total market share. These are small regional players, who can compete quite successfully with big players, but they need to choose more "niche" segments. For example, HoReCa, which has its own strong players, has a segment of various functional types of ice cream – craft, gelato, organic. They will also continue to develop, but the scale of production, of course, is not enough to get into the rating of the largest players.

As the head explained, the rating reflects production volumes, which is not equivalent to sales, since there is a "considerable gap" for a number of companies. It arose for a number of reasons: firstly, the rating includes data on the volume of production of ice cream, which companies produce at their facilities, but for other brands, including own brands for retail chains. Secondly, export volumes were taken into account, and thirdly, ice cream is a seasonal product, so the stocks of ice cream in companies vary, which also affects production volumes.

Speaking about the assortment of ice cream, the speaker said that the rating "tried" to include products of all kinds and fruit ice. A block that is associated with soft ice cream and mixtures for making ice cream and cocktails was not included in the rating.

‘In my opinion, this is a separate market, especially dry mixes,’ the expert reads. ‘If we consider liquid ones, there are only a few manufacturers, for example, the top company Ehrmann, which produces ice cream for McDonald's, where it occupies more than 80% of the market. We also did not include importers, as this is our internal rating in terms of production volumes.

The speaker explained that we are talking about large transatlantic companies - Mars, Unilever, Food Union, which "feel good in the Russian market." As for Food Union, he said that this player is in the top 10 in the European market with a turnover of more than 300 million euros. In his opinion, the company will develop further and increase supplies to China, as well as to other export markets. Perhaps in the next rating it will be in the list of participants.

The expert said that there is no dynamics in the rating, since there are no numbers, which he explained for several reasons. The first is that many companies were closed and did not provide data, the second is that the year 2021 turned out to be "quite specific" for ice cream producers due to the pandemic.

‘Yes, ice cream production has increased by 8% compared to 2020, but compared to 2019, the indicators have changed much more modestly with an increase of less than 1%,’ the head said.

The third reason for the lack of necessary data to track the dynamics of indicators, he called the labeling of ice cream since June 2021, which "shook" manufacturers. As a result, some producers managed to make stocks and gained a competitive advantage on this while the others faced technological problems and could not produce the necessary volumes.

‘Of course, the timing was not the best, and the industry is not the best for the pilot project,’ concluded the speaker. ‘However, the industry withstood, most of the players coped with the tasks, despite all the obstacles. Therefore, there was no crisis situation in the ice cream industry at all.