{"id":12968,"date":"2026-02-19T14:14:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/12968\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T14:14:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T14:14:12","slug":"nestle-sells-remaining-ice-cream-assets-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/12968\/","title":{"rendered":"Nestl\u00e9 sells remaining ice-cream assets"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Credit: Markus Mainka\/Shutterstock.com<\/p>\n

Nestl\u00e9 is exiting the remaining ice-cream business that does not sit within its Froneri joint venture with private-equity firm PAI Partners.<\/p>\n

As the Swiss food and drinks giant announced its annual results today (19 February), complete with a restructuring around four business units, Nestl\u00e9 said it is in \u201cadvanced negotiations\u201d with UK-based Froneri for the assets.<\/p>\n

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CEO Philipp Navratil, who joined Nestl\u00e9 in September, clarified on a follow-up media call today that the ice-cream business up for disposal generates \u201cjust shy\u201d of SFr1bn ($1.2bn) in sales and is centred on six markets.<\/p>\n

Addressing analysts earlier this morning, Navratil said: \u201cThere are times when we decide that focusing means exiting businesses. This is the case with our remaining ice-cream business \u2013 it\u2019s strong but small, and it\u2019s a distraction for us.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis business is a great fit for Froneri and we have agreed to sell the business in a phased way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The CEO clarified with reporters the sale is in progress and should be completed by early next year, insisting \u201cthere is no plan to exit the JV with Froneri\u201d.<\/p>\n

Like FMCG peer Unilever, Nestl\u00e9 will maintain a distant presence in ice cream but outside of its core corporate structure.<\/p>\n

Unilever spun-off its ice-cream operations<\/a> into The Magnum Ice Cream Company last year. While it still retains around a 20% interest in the independent business, Unilever also plans to exit in a phased manner.<\/p>\n

Nestl\u00e9 entered the 50-50 partnership with PAI Partners in 2016 when the food major merged its European ice-cream operations with UK-based R&R Ice Cream, which was owned by the private-equity firm.<\/p>\n

Under the initial joint venture, Nestl\u00e9\u2019s and R&R\u2019s ice-cream operations in Europe, the Middle East, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, the Philippines and South Africa were combined. While the US and Israel were not included in 2016, three years later the latter was also pulled under the Froneri umbrella.<\/p>\n

Nestl\u00e9 then sold its US ice-cream operations the same year to Froneri.<\/p>\n

Navratil said today: \u201cWe held on to those six businesses because we thought we could drive growth. Looking at it now, they don\u2019t have any global scale and we cannot drive this the same way as Froneri can. They have scale, they have the knowledge and they have the brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

Just Food has asked Nestl\u00e9 to confirm what the remaining ice-cream assets entail and to identify the six markets concerned.<\/p>\n

Sources familiar with the sale proceedings, who asked not to be named, told Just Food that PAI Partners has been in discussions with Nestl\u00e9 to acquire the ice-cream assets. \u201cGood progress\u201d has been made, they said.<\/p>\n

PAI Partners declined to comment.<\/p>\n

In October, the investor restructured its shareholding<\/a> in Froneri with a minority investment from the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA).<\/p>\n

ADIA, which invests on behalf of the Abu Dhabi government, acquired a minority, undisclosed portion of PAI Partners\u2019 50% share via a wholly-owned subsidiary as a co-investor with the private-equity firm.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs, via Vintage Strategies at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, reinvested in Froneri through a so-called single-asset continuation vehicle (CV).<\/p>\n

Navratil added today: \u201cWe\u2019re really happy with the performance that Froneri is driving. Selling the remaining ice-cream businesses of Nestl\u00e9 into Froneri is our strong belief that Froneri is the right owner for those businesses and will drive a better performance than we will do going forward.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Markus Mainka\/Shutterstock.com Nestl\u00e9 is exiting the remaining ice-cream business that does not sit within its Froneri joint…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12953,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[126],"tags":[8978,199],"class_list":{"0":"post-12968","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nestle","8":"tag-froneri","9":"tag-nestle"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}