Michele Ferrero

Michele Ferrero (born 1927) is the owner of the eponymous chocolate maker Ferrero SpA, one of Europe’s largest with estimated 2002 sales of $4 billion. He is Italy’s richest person, with a personal wealth of $11.00 billion, surpassing Silvio Berlusconi in March, 2008.

Brands include Nutella, Mon Chéri, Kinder Chocolate, Ferrero Rocher, Tic Tacs and Kinder Eggs.

In Italy, after the war, candy and confections were in short supply and were purchased mainly for special occasions from the local sweet shop. It was in the small town of Alba, in northwestern Italy, that master confectioner Pietro Ferrero developed a system that enabled him to mass-produce high quality confectionery and offer them to consumers at reasonable prices.

The first of the Ferrero products was Pasta Gianduja, a chocolate-hazelnut spread that, re-named Nutella, was destined to become the highest selling sweet spread in the world. Since that first successful venture, Ferrero has gone on to introduce many of the best known confectionery brands in the world.

Although Pietro Ferrero and his brother Giovanni had laid the groundwork for future company success, when both died in the early 1950s, it fell to Pietro’s son, Michele Ferrero, to continue the pursuit of their firm, as Ferrero expanded across Europe.

Ferrero first moved beyond Italy in 1956, establishing both manufacturing facilities and offices in Germany. This was followed by France in 1958.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Michele Ferrero began a strong new phase of international expansion with sales offices and production facilities outside Europe. Ferrero U.S.A., Inc. was first, then came Ferrero Canada, Ferrero Australia, Ferrero Ecuador, Ferrero Brazil, Ferrero Japan, and Ferrero Inc. in Puerto Rico.

More recently, offices have been opened in Hungary, Poland and in the Czech Republic.

In 1946 Pietro Ferrero invented a cream of hazelnuts and cocoa, meant to be spread on bread, and called it Pasta Gianduja. The product had a great success and therefore Ferrero created the new company to produce and market it. [Note: The origins of Gianduja chocolate may date back to the Napoleonic war period, when cocoa beans were scarce and ground hazelnuts were substituted. Ferrero did not invent gianduja.]

A similar product, sold under the name Nutella since 1964, became popular around the world, along with many other products, including the chocolates Ferrero Rocher, Pocket Coffee, Mon Chéri, Giotto, Confetteria Raffaello coconut cream candy, and the tic tac breath mints. A dark chocolate version of the Ferrero Rocher is also available, called the Ferrero Rondnoir, which contains a pearl of dark chocolate in the center instead of a hazelnut, chocolate cream instead of Nutella and cruchy chocolate bits instead of crushed hazelnuts. There is also a coconut version, Confetteria Raffaello, which contains milk cream surrounding an almond and covered with meringue and shredded coconut. The Ferrero Prestige collection is a set of three: Rocher, Rondnoir, and a coconut version called Garden Coco. The Garden Coco candy is similar to Confetteria Raffaello, but has coconut cream instead of milk cream.

Ferrero also produces the Kinder product series, including Kinder Surprise (also known as “Kinder Eggs”), Fiesta Ferrero, Kinder Chocolatebars, Kinder Happy Hippo, Kinder Maxi, Kinder Délice and Kinder Bueno.