Key summary of Unilever’s ice cream demerger and TMICC launch
- TMICC becomes world’s largest ice cream company after Unilever demerger
- New company controls €7.9bn revenue and 21 percent global market share
- TMICC owns four of five biggest brands including Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s
- Shares debut at €12.96 giving market cap of €7.93bn after spin-off
- £50m UK investment aims to boost output 50 percent and drive growth
Just last week, Unilever was the biggest player in ice cream. Today, the UK-headquartered multinational doesn’t sell a single stick, punnet, or snack-sized Bon Bon. As of this weekend, Unilever is officially out of the ice cream game.
The baton has been passed to The Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC) – a newly demerged, independent business that now claims the title of the world’s largest ice cream company.
TMICC’s ice cream portfolio brings in €7.9bn in revenue, commands a 21% market share, and operates the world’s largest fleet of ice cream cabinets – three million strong.
The newly independent company owns four of the five biggest ice cream brands on the planet (Froneri-owned Häagen-Dazs being the exception), including Wall’s, Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s, and Cornetto.
The company’s journey to the top began in an unlikely way: when a man in Philadelphia, William Breyer, hand-cranked his first gallon of ice cream back in 1866. Here’s how that humble start evolved into an €8bn ice cream empire.
Pioneers of an ice cream empire
1866: William Breyer produced his first gallon of ice cream. Fifty years later, Breyers Ice Cream Company was making more than one million gallons of ice cream every year.
1922: Wall’s was the invention of Thomas Wall, who owned a butcher in London. In the summer months, when business slowed, he started producing ice cream. The brand officially launched in 1922, and expanded to a purpose-built ice cream factory in Gloucester, England, in 1959.
1923: The founding of Popsicle came about when Frank Epperson invented the very first ice pop in the San Francisco Bay area. In 1923, the invention was patented the ‘Epsicle’, but later in life his children encouraged a name change to Popsicle.
1959: Cornetto was founded in Naples, Italy, by ice cream manufacturers Spica and Mario Facenda in 1959. They had managed to overcome the problem of soggy, impractical ice cream cones, by covering the inside of a waffle cone with oil, sugar and chocolate.
1978: Ben & Jerry’s was founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, school friends in Vermont, US. They secured $12,000 in investment, took a $5 course in ice cream making, and opened an ice cream scoop shop in a renovated gas station.
1989: Magnum was developed by the technical director of Unilever-owned Frisko in the 1980s, and first launched by the company in 1989.
Unilever buys up big to secure global ice cream dominance
Most of TMICC’s best-selling brands – like Wall’s, Cornetto and Ben & Jerry’s – were created by third parties, and some even before Unilever itself was founded. But an aggressive acquisition strategy over decades helped to grow the ice cream portfolio, with the most recent brand acquired just two years ago.
In 1976, Unilever bought the patent for Cornetto, in 1989 it acquired the Popsicle Brand, and in 1993, Breyers was purchased from Kraft Foods. Ben & Jerry’s was bought in 2000. The most recent brand to be acquired is Yasso, a frozen Greek yoghurt brand it bought in 2023 from Yasso Holdings in the US.
Since then, Unilever has been innovating within its ice cream portfolio with the demerger in mind. In 2024, the business launched bite-sized Magnum Bon Bons to feed into the growing snacking category, and in 2025 TMICC rolled out its first new brand Hydro:ICE – not an ice cream, but an ice pop for “adult functional refreshment”.
The ice cream demerger - and Ben & Jerry’s resistance
But for TMICC, the biggest events in recent times have centred firmly around its demerger from Unilever. The spin-off was first announced in March 2024, and there have been ups and downs since then.
On the upside, the ice cream portfolio has been performing well. Not nearly as well as Unilever’s beauty and wellness division, where growth is up 7% over the last two years, but well nonetheless.
But the decision to spin out ice cream aligns with Unilever’s broader strategy to de-food its portfolio: in the last two years alone, the company has sold off meat brands Unox and Zwan, plant-based business The Vegetarian Butcher, and snacks brand Graze.
Things got rockier for TMICC when Ben & Jerry’s repeatedly accused Unilever of silencing the brand, and announced it wanted complete independence. TMICC doesn’t want to give Ben & Jerry’s up, a brand that’s been doing “phenomenally well”. “We grew the business by a factor of six from a business that was hardly profitable. It’s now a very profitable business,” says ice cream lead Peter ter Kulve.
There are now fresh concerns that Ben & Jerry’s board, members, and co-founders could cause reputational damage to TMICC. But not to the extent that TMICC will grant Ben & Jerry independence. The brand remains a big hitter: in 2024, Ben & Jerry’s brought in over $1bn.
Ben & Jerry’s hasn’t been the only hurdle in Unilever’s ice cream demerger. The US federal government shutdown on 1 October this year meant TMICC couldn’t IPO in November as planned. The company pushed the demerger date forward to 6 December 2025, with TMICC shares to begin trading in London today, 8 December. In New York and Amsterdam, trading is expected to start tomorrow, 9 December.
Where we are today: TMICC dominating ice cream
And so this is where we find ourselves, with a newly demerged, independent ice cream giant in our midst. That was official as of 9:00 CET today, when CEO ter Kulve rang the bell in Amsterdam to commence trading of TMICC shares for the first time.
Shares are trading at €12.96, suggesting a market capitalisation of €7.93bn – slightly up from its market value under Unilever.
What the demerger means for TMICC’s future remains to be seen, but ter Kulve believes independence will bring speed. “As an independent listed company, we will be more agile, more focused, and more ambitious than ever.”
That ambition is already reflected in its innovation and investment strategy. TMICC has committed £50m to its UK ice cream operations, a move expected to boost capacity by 25% and increase output by 50% by 2027.
This investment underpins its goal of achieving 3–5% medium-term growth while driving a two-pronged innovation approach: reinventing existing brands and creating entirely new ones.
If it’s successful, TMICC can strengthen its lead and set the pace in ice cream – considered a fiercely competitive market.
