Latest news with #KraftFoods
Daily Mail
20-07-2025
- Business
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Now Curly Wurlys become latest victim of shrinkflation - as multipacks cut the amount of bars, but keep the price the SAME
Cury Wurly bars have become the latest victims of shrinkflation as multipacks have shrunk from five to four - but the price has remained the same. The newly-shrunk packs of the Cadbury 's bar are being sold for £1.40, even though the bigger size cost the same only a few months ago. The change has been blasted by sweet-toothed shoppers online, causing some to vow to never buy the chocolate again due to the sneaky corporate tactic. Packs of Fudge and Freddo have previously gone down from five to four bars, and Dairy Milk Little Bars are reduced from six to four. Mondelēz International (previously called Kraft Foods), which has owned Cadbury since 2010, blamed the change on increases in cocoa and dairy prices, as well as rising transport and energy costs. One angry customer wrote on Twitter /X: 'I'll try to enjoy this four pack as it will be my last.' Another added: 'I defo won't be buying any. I saw it was a four-pack and was like hell no.' Consumer champion Martyn James described the Curly Wurly - which first launched in 1970 - as the 'chocolate treat of my youth'. He added: 'Chocolate is more than just an occasional sweet treat. It's evocative of our childhood and means a huge amount to us. 'Manufacturers need to realise that by doing this, they are destroying our faith in these cherished brands. And when we are unhappy, we vote with our feet. So cutting the chocolate will only drive away precious customers.' Curly Wurly bar of chocolate-coated hard caramel has been a Cadbury staple ever since it was launched in the UK in 1970. Mondelēz International said: 'We understand the economic pressures that consumers continue to face and any changes to our product sizes is a last resort for our business. 'However, as a food producer, we are continuing to experience significantly higher input costs across our supply chain, with ingredients such as cocoa and dairy, which are widely used in our products, costing far more than they have done previously. 'Meanwhile, other costs like energy and transport, also remain high. This means that our products continue to be much more expensive to make and while we have absorbed these costs where possible, we still face considerable challenges 'As a result of this difficult environment, we have had to make the decision to slightly reduce the weight of our Cadbury Curly Wurly multipacks so that we can continue to provide consumers with the brands they love, without compromising on the great taste and quality they expect.' Meanwhile, bags of Crunchie Rocks, Bitsa Wispa and Oreo Bites have all shrunk from 110g to 100g. However, they are still being sold at major retailers for the same price - £1.75. It is yet another blow for sweet-toothed Brits as Cadbury have quietly reduced the size of another multipack As well as Cadbury, other notable confectionary brands such as Nestle's KitKat and Terry's Chocolate Orange have suffered from shrinkflation. It comes after Spin Genie UK analysed Britain's four main chocolate selection boxes over Christmas - Heroes, Celebrations, Roses and Quality Street - to reveal how they have decreased in size over the last 15 years. Last year year, they were priced at approximately £6 across major UK supermarkets. Back in 2009, the boxes came with a heftier price tag, costing around £10 each. While today's tubs may seem more affordable, they offer less indulgence per pound than in the past. In 2009, across all tubs combined, the average weight per pound was 101.25g, whereas, in 2024, this is 93.25g. Consumer expert Kate Hardcastle previously told MailOnline shrinkflation is 'the exact opposite of what shoppers value – transparency and authenticity'. She said: 'I understand why producers do it. The cost of everything from ingredients to labour has risen dramatically over the last few years and we don't like paying more. So the obvious solution is to shrink the product and hope shoppers don't notice. 'They call it "re-engineering" or "price management" and it happens most easily in products with a lot of packaging, making it easy to disguise the shrinkage. 'But no one wants to be taken for a fool and that's what it feels like, and it's happening more and more.' Which? magazine's senior editor, Ele Clark, wants the Government to urge retailers to make unit pricing clearer. She said in August: 'Supermarkets and manufacturers must be more upfront with consumers about any changes in the size or ingredients of their products. 'They should also ensure that unit pricing is prominent, legible and consistent so that shoppers can easily compare prices across different brands and pack sizes.' So far British politicians have been unwilling to act and legislate on the rising trend of shrinkflation. In April, during a parliamentary inquiry into fairness in the food supply, leading UK retailers and brands denied the need for any further shrinkflation regulations and instead justified the practice. But this is contrary to what's happening elsewhere. For example, since July, French supermarkets have been obliged to display when food and consumer goods have been shrunk. Information must stay in place for two months. The French finance minister declared shoppers deserve 'transparency' and slammed shrinkflation as a 'rip-off'.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Ill-fated 2015 merger comes to fore amid Kraft Heinz spin-off speculation
A 'strategic transaction' proposition put forward by Kraft Heinz in May could well be about to emerge with a business split a tad over the ten-year anniversary of the mega-merger of Kraft Foods and HJ Heinz. Such a development would surely not be much of a surprise to market watchers following a slew of poor results from Kraft Heinz and perhaps a veiled submission of what might be considered as the failed combination of 2015 – the company's shares are currently trading at $27.14 in New York compared to circa $88 when that deal was completed on 2 July of that year. Berkshire Hathaway, the US investment group led by Warren Buffett, is reportedly weighing up the disposal of its estimated 27% share in the Heinz ketchup maker, while private-equity firm 3G Capital, which joined the billionaire in the 2015 business combination, is long gone having sold its shares in 2023. Kraft Heinz pledged in May to 'unlock shareholder value' as the company assessed strategic options for a business that generated revenue of $26bn last year. CEO Carlos Abrams-Rivera, in the job for only 18 months, may well have been encouraged by the split initiated by Kellogg Company in 2023. Confectionery giant Ferrero announced a $3.1bn deal for WK Kellogg last week, the North American breakfast cereals business that emerged from that separation. The other portion, Kellanova, is in the throes of a $35.9bn takeover by another sweets heavyweight, Mars. A valuation of $20bn has been attached to a potential spin-off by Kraft Heinz, according to unnamed sources at The Wall Street Journal, which reported on Friday (11 July) a demerger may feature a 'large chunk of its grocery business'. Sauces, condiments and spreads such as its namesake ketchup brand and the Grey Poupon Dijon mustard line would remain as Kraft Heinz. Industry analysts were quick off the blocks to comment on the speculation, no doubt galvanised by the speed in which the Ferrero-WK Kellogg deal came to fruition last week, from speculation through to fact the same day. The WSJ report, meanwhile, came days after Kraft Heinz announced the sale of a handful of brands in Italy to the recently created NewPrinces for €120m ($140.2m). Investment bank Stifel, in a report led by Matthew Smith, threw some perspective on what might emerge. 'We believe the potential spin of a part of the grocery business would include the company's slower growth and highly competitive/commoditised categories, with the remaining entity keeping Kraft's priority platforms including sauces/condiments and snacking/easy meals. Smith said the Stifel analysts believe the faster-growing assets to remain would include Kraft Heinz's North America retail "accelerate" platforms, the company's global away-from-home unit and its emerging markets businesses. The assets spun off could house the retail portions of the company's "protect" and "balance" platforms. Stifel's analysts quantified the accelerate platforms as including condiments, ready-meals brands Mac & Cheese and Ore-Ida, plus snacking lines such as Lunchables and Delimex. The assets that could be spun off would include Oscar Mayer meats, Jell-O desserts, drinks brands Capri-Sun and Kool-Aid, cheese with Kraft and Velveeta, plus coffee, as in Maxwell House and Gevalia. Meanwhile, Peter McDonald, a food-industry consultant and former General Mills executive of 20-plus years, weighed in on the failed merger angle of 2015 in what he described as one of the 'darkest chapters in CPG food during my career'. McDonald explained his thoughts in a LinkedIn post: 'The new entity pursued a new-to-the-industry aggressive margin expansion playbook that sent competitors chasing 'zero-based budgeting' and other nonsensical corporate initiatives in a desperate attempt to avoid being gobbled up themselves. 'Investors lapped it up and Kraft Heinz hit a maximum enterprise value of $140bn in 2017. Since then, food-industry reality has reasserted itself and the margin extraction from innovation, marketing, talent, and pricing aggression has taken its toll,' he wrote, putting Kraft Heinz's current enterprise value at $50bn. And acknowledging the reports of a spin-off are only based on speculation at this point, he added: 'Now the company may be broken up into constituent parts not unlike things were when the whole fiasco started'. Kraft Heinz's 2024 reported sales dropped 3% to $25.85bn, with organic growth down 2.1% in what CEO Abrams-Rivera described as 'a challenging year with our top-line results coming in below our expectations'. Net income fell to $2.74bn, from the $2.86bn booked for 2023. The company also reported a 63.2% slump in full-year operating profit to $1.7bn, which was linked to $3.7bn in non-cash impairment losses. It was a poor performance echoed in the opening quarter of 2025, too. Net sales dropped 6.4% on a reported basis and declined 4.7% in organic terms to just shy of $7bn. In the three months to 29 March, operating income decreased 8.1% to $1.2bn. Net income stood at $712m versus $801m a year earlier. Alongside the first-quarter numbers, Kraft Heinz also cut its 2025 outlook across a range of metrics to factor in the potential upward pressure on input-cost inflation from changes in tariffs. 'There can be no assurance that the company's assessment process will result in any transaction, or any assurance as to its outcome or timing,' Kraft Heinz said in a statement in May as it revealed the strategic transaction proposition. 'The company has not set a timetable for completion of this process and does not intend to make any further announcements regarding the process unless and until it determines that further disclosure is appropriate or necessary.' Picking up on the WSJ report, TD Cowen analyst Robert Moskow estimated the likely valuation of the part of the Kraft Heinz grocery business spin-off at $14.5bn, short of the $20bn put forward by the publication. He, too, linked his observations to the Kellogg demerger. 'Bankers and board members of the food industry certainly have noticed the value capture of the 2023 Kellogg split up. After accounting for the Mars and Ferrero acquisitions of the two parts, investors will have realised 41% since the spin, while consumer staples stocks (by our math) fell 6% and fundamentals deteriorated due to changes in consumer preferences and external factors like GLP-1s,' Moskow wrote in a research note. The TD Cowen analyst also speculated a buyer might step in – whether that's Kraft Heinz's intention or not – to snap up the offload, naming McCormick as a potential suitor. 'Our sum-of-the-parts analysis indicates 11% upside to KHC's current enterprise value based on eight times EV/EBITDA for grocery and 10.5x EV/EBITDA for sauces, condiments and spreads,' Moskow suggested. 'However, we could see another 20% upside if a strategic acquirer steps up to buy the sauces and condiments business (about 44% of KHC sales), which will look a lot like the original pre-merger Heinz business of 2013. For example, we see a good strategic fit with McCormick, which has been expanding into the condiments space for several years through tack-on deals, and a high degree of EPS accretion.' Moskow added to his thesis by explaining that 'mega-mergers in food have low success rates and that 'depth' tends to beat 'breadth''. He continued: 'The skill set and investment requirements to succeed in disparate parts of the grocery store (e.g. refrigerated, frozen, shelf-stable, and snacks) tend to differ. 'We believe that food companies with focused portfolios and category leadership (e.g. Hershey) have a better chance of long-term success than diversified companies trying to leverage operating and marketing capabilities across a wide range of categories.' A common theme emanating from food-industry analysts is the throw back to the pre-2015 merger, what AllianceBernstein's Alexia Howard deemed as a 'reversal'. 'When we looked into the relative growth rates of the legacy Heinz company since the companies were merged in 2015, it looks as though the legacy Heinz business has grown retail sales at a 5.3% CAGR over the past decade, while the legacy Kraft brands have grown at only 2%,' Howard wrote in a research note. 'Looking at how the company could break up might mean that the remaining faster-growing company comprises the 25% of companywide sales in international markets plus another 30% of the 75% of the US sales for a total of around 47.5% of companywide sales.' Howard explained further: 'Looking at how the sales could break down, it seems that the faster-growing remaining company could represent around 47.5% of company-wide sales. Clearly, the margins in the international markets are significantly lower than in North America, which could mean that 38.2% of the total company's adjusted EBITDA of $6.36bn in 2024 potentially sits with the faster-growing remaining company, while the remaining 61.8% sits with the spin-off.' The Stifel analysts added: 'The hypothetical slower growth 'Spin Co' would incorporate the retail protect platform featuring a projected low-single digit, ten-year, industry CAGR, high gross margins and low private-label penetration, as well as the retail balance commoditised business platform featuring a flat projected ten-year industry CAGR, low gross margins, and high private-label penetration. 'We view a potential spin of the lower growth and lower-margin retail businesses as a way to unlock value within the higher growth and higher-margin remaining businesses.' "Ill-fated 2015 merger comes to fore amid Kraft Heinz spin-off speculation" was originally created and published by Just Drinks, a GlobalData owned brand. The information on this site has been included in good faith for general informational purposes only. It is not intended to amount to advice on which you should rely, and we give no representation, warranty or guarantee, whether express or implied as to its accuracy or completeness. You must obtain professional or specialist advice before taking, or refraining from, any action on the basis of the content on our site.
Yahoo
27-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Major Kraft Mac And Cheese Recall That Went International
The equivalent of roughly 19.5 million bowls of Kraft macaroni and cheese were recalled because the product was unsafe to eat back in 2015. Single boxes, as well as 3-, 4-, and 5-packs, of dried noodles and powdered cheese, unfortunately, also potentially contained stray pieces of metal. The unwanted addition ended up in the boxes of mac because of a machinery issue; it was found that two pieces of stainless steel were rubbing against each other in a piece of equipment, which caused metal fragments to fall into the food. This recall included a total of 6.5 million boxes across countries in South America and the Caribbean, such as Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, and the Virgin Islands, as well as the continental United States and Puerto Rico. Obviously, accidentally ingesting metal could be very serious, and eight people did discover pieces in their boxes of mac. However, there were no reports of any injuries or illnesses related to the foreign object contamination. Read more: Discontinued Costco Grocery Products We Probably Won't Get Back As strange as it sounds, foreign objects — like the stray metal in the aforementioned boxes of Kraft mac and cheese — are among the most common reasons that foods are recalled. As such, this was not the only time Kraft had issues with inedible items in its products. There have actually been a number of Kraft Food recalls that affected millions, including one that had to do with a Kraft Singles choking hazard. Because of a packaging snafu in September 2023, the plastic film covering each piece of processed cheese failed to come off in one fell swoop in some cases. The strip of plastic that was left behind on the slices caused gagging and, in some cases, choking, but there were no reports of serious injuries or illnesses. You would think that the company would figure out a way to avoid this issue, but this has actually been a recurring recall. After the metal mac and cheese incident in March 2015, Kraft Singles were recalled for the very same plastic film issue in both July and September. When it came to food safety, 2015 wasn't a great year, both for the Kraft Company and lovers of processed American cheese products. For more food and drink goodness, join The Takeout's newsletter. Get taste tests, food & drink news, deals from your favorite chains, recipes, cooking tips, and more! Read the original article on The Takeout.
Fashion Network
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Neutrogena-owner Kenvue names new CFO
Neutrogena -owner Kenvue Inc. announced on Friday the appointment of Amit Banati to the role of chief financial officer, effective May 12. Banati will succeed Paul Ruh, who will remain with the U.S. company for a "brief period" to help with a smooth transition. As CFO, Banati will be responsible for overseeing the firm's finance and strategy verticals, in a bid to accelerate profitable growth and deliver value to shareholders. A 30-year consumer products company finance and operations veteran, Banati most recently served as vice chairman and chief financial officer of Kellanova (previously Kellogg Company). Prior to that, he held finance and operating leadership roles at Kraft Foods (now Mondelez International), Cadbury Schweppes, and Procter & Gamble. At Kraft Foods, Banati served as president, North Asia and Asia Pacific strategy, and led the integration of Cadbury and Kraft Foods for that region. At Cadbury Schweppes, he was president of the Pacific region, overseeing Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore, and served previously as the company's chief financial officer of the Asia Pacific division. Finally, at Procter & Gamble, he spent nearly 15 years in finance roles, rising to become chief financial officer of the Asean, Australia, India, Singapore region in the company's health and beauty Care division. 'We are thrilled to welcome Amit to Kenvue and look forward to leveraging his deep industry expertise and business transformation experience as we continue to focus on accelerating Kenvue's profitable growth and delivering value for shareholders,' said Thibaut Mongon, chief executive officer, Kenvue, which also owns the Aveeno, and Johnson's brands, among others. 'With much of the work to establish Kenvue as an independent company completed and our strengthened commercial and operational foundations in place, now is the right time for a CFO transition. Amit is a world-class executive with a proven track record across both financial and operational roles and the ideal person to further support our efforts to work differently and move faster and lead our Finance and Strategy organizations into the future.' In 2024, the New Jersey-based firm reported flat sales of $15.5 billion for the full year ended December 29, on the back of softer-than-expected sales growth.
Fashion Network
12-05-2025
- Business
- Fashion Network
Neutrogena-owner Kenvue names new CFO
A 30-year consumer products company finance and operations veteran, Banati most recently served as vice chairman and chief financial officer of Kellanova (previously Kellogg Company). Prior to that, he held finance and operating leadership roles at Kraft Foods (now Mondelez International), Cadbury Schweppes, and Procter & Gamble. At Kraft Foods, Banati served as president, North Asia and Asia Pacific strategy, and led the integration of Cadbury and Kraft Foods for that region. At Cadbury Schweppes, he was president of the Pacific region, overseeing Australia, New Zealand, Japan and Singapore, and served previously as the company's chief financial officer of the Asia Pacific division. Finally, at Procter & Gamble, he spent nearly 15 years in finance roles, rising to become chief financial officer of the Asean, Australia, India, Singapore region in the company's health and beauty Care division. 'We are thrilled to welcome Amit to Kenvue and look forward to leveraging his deep industry expertise and business transformation experience as we continue to focus on accelerating Kenvue's profitable growth and delivering value for shareholders,' said Thibaut Mongon, chief executive officer, Kenvue, which also owns the Aveeno, and Johnson's brands, among others. 'With much of the work to establish Kenvue as an independent company completed and our strengthened commercial and operational foundations in place, now is the right time for a CFO transition. Amit is a world-class executive with a proven track record across both financial and operational roles and the ideal person to further support our efforts to work differently and move faster and lead our Finance and Strategy organizations into the future.' In 2024, the New Jersey-based firm reported flat sales of $15.5 billion for the full year ended December 29, on the back of softer-than-expected sales growth.
