Unilever buys its main competitor on Romanian ice cream market

Unilever, one of the biggest consumer goods producers in the world, has reached an agreement with Romanian entrepreneur Vasile Armenean to buy local ice cream maker Betty Ice from Suceava. The contract between the two sides has already been signed, according to sources quoted by local mergers & acquisitions journal Mirsanu.ro. The value of this deal hasn’t been made public, but sources from the M&A market estimate it around EUR 80-90 million. Unilever is the biggest player in the local ice cream, market, which is estimated at around EUR 150 million per year. Betty Ice is the second-biggest local ice cream producer. The company, which has a factory in Suceava, in North-Eastern Romania, had sales of close to EUR 28 million and a net profit of over EUR 5 million in 2016, and some 635 employees. Vasile Armenean founded this business in 1991 and named it after his daughter Beatrice. editor@romania-insider.com