Italian Ice Cream Company Joins Competition in Turkish Market
Italy’s L’era Fresca has joined the competition in local ice cream business with a production facility in İstanbul’s İkitelli district. The firm aims at opening 10 stores in one month.Ice cream companies have intensified their investments in Turkey ahead of summer, with Turkey’s Mado launching its “express” concept for ice cream service and Italy’s L’era Fresca opening its first ice cream shop in Istanbul on Thursday.
“We prepared a caravan-like model project abroad. It has a modern image and is planned for holiday routes and regions,” said Mado Executive Board Chairman Mehmet Kanbur. The first 10 caravan-type express shops will open in Istanbul, the Marmara Sea and Anatolia regions.
Some 200 express Mados have already been launched on holiday routes, and the figure will rise to 2,000 in five year’s time, said Kanbur, Anatolia news agency reported Thursday.
A budget of $10 million has been allocated for the new concept, Kanbur said, adding that they had sent four express ice cream caravans to Azerbaijan and would send some to Bulgaria soon. “We will work with the franchising system and rent caravans to students, teachers and anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit.”
Meanwhile, the Italian ice cream brand L’era Fresca launched Thursday its first shop in Istanbul’s Bebek district.
“We plan to open 10 stores in one month in Istanbul,” said Ahmet Toksöz, the founder of Fermet Gıda, partner to L’era Fresca in Turkey, in a press conference to introduce L’era Fresca products Thursday. He said their aim was to open 20 to 25 stores in Istanbul and a total of 40 overall in Turkey.
“Then we want to expand abroad, opening eight to 10 ice cream shops in cities such as Moscow, Kiev, Tbilisi and Dubai,” he said.
Some 6 million Turkish Liras have been invested in a production facility in Istanbul’s İkitelli district and 10 shops, Toksöz said. “The İkitelli facility’s production capacity is sufficient [to meet the needs of] 100 shops.”
The per capita consumption of ice cream in Turkey is considerably low compared to the United States and Europe, according to Toksöz. “In the U.S. [per capita ice cream consumption] is 14 liters, in Europe 8.5, whereas in Turkey it is 3.5 liters.”
June 23, 2011
SOURCE: TURKISH DAILY NEWS
