Candy giant Ferrero opened a $214 million Kinder Bueno production facility in downstate Bloomington on Monday, the company said.
Ferrero initially announced plans for the factory — an expansion of an existing production facility in Bloomington that is home to the company’s first chocolate factory outside Europe — two years ago.
Workers at the expanded facility will make Kinder Bueno bars — wafers coated in chocolate and filled with a creamy hazelnut filling — which Ferrero first introduced in the U.S. five years ago.
Kinder Bueno netted more than $214 million in total U.S. retail sales in the last year, Ferrero said. All in all, Kinder products, which also include Kinder chocolate bars, Kinder seasonal products and Kinder Joy chocolate eggs, are now worth about $550 million dollars in the U.S., the company said.
A high percentage of the customers who purchase Kinder Bueno products buy them again, Ferrero North America President Michael Lindsey said in an interview with the Tribune. The product has “the highest repeat rate I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“The ability to make it in the United States — we are getting it as fresh as we can, directly out of the plant and to consumers — is a huge opportunity for us,” he said.
Ferrero has produced Crunch, 100 Grand and Raisinets products at the Bloomington facility since it acquired the facility from Nestle in 2018. It opened a chocolate factory there in May, a $75 million investment it first announced in 2020.
Founded in Italy in 1946, privately held Ferrero has in recent years acquired Chicago-based Ferrara Candy, chocolatier Fannie May, Nestle’s U.S. candy business, including the Butterfinger and Nerds brands, and a portion of Kellanova’s — formerly Kellogg’s — North American snacks business.
Last year, the company opened a research and development lab in the Marshall Field building in downtown Chicago. Locally, the company produces Baby Ruth and Butterfinger candy bars at a facility in Franklin Park and makes Keebler products in a factory on 110th Street in Chicago.
The company said the Bloomington expansion will add about 200 new jobs to the facility, which now employs more than 650 people total. The company, which has about 1,700 employees across Illinois, received an enterprise zone property tax abatement for the expansion as well as an Economic Development for a Growing Economy tax credit from the state.
