The world's largest ice cream manufacturer is Unilever, the same company that makes Dove soap, Vaseline, Lipton tea and Slim-fast. The company produces popular ice cream brands including Walls, Magnum, Breyer® and Ben & Jerry's. The other main player in the ice cream market is Nestlé, which owns Edy's, Movenpick and Nestlé Extreme and distributes Häagen-Dazs® in the United States.
More facts about ice cream:
- Ice cream is big business — more than $60 billion US Dollars (USD) a year are spent on ice cream. Nestlé and Unilever control more than one-third of that market.
- Ice cream can legally be composed of up to 50 percent air.
- About two billion gallons (about 16 billion pints) of ice cream are produced each year. The top five ice-cream consuming countries are the United States — where the average person eats more than 20 gallons (160 pints) a year — New Zealand, Denmark, Australia and Belgium.