Ferrero

The great leader of the Group’s development is Michele Ferrero. With the desire to make and create new products with state-of-the-art ideas, he has revolutionised the food habits of millions of consumers. Thanks to his consistent and efficient partnership with his wife Maria Franca, he was the first Italian manufacturer after World War II to open production sites and offices abroad in the confectionary sector, turning the Company into a truly international Group. We have to return to the ‘40s to discover the roots of this success. These were the years when Piera and Pietro, Michele’s parents, transformed a pastry shop into a factory. These first and decisive steps forward were thanks to the products “invented” by Pietro Ferrero and his son Michele, who was then very young. Another key to success was the effective sales network organised by Giovanni, Pietro’s brother, who died in 1949. And now Ferrero’s story has reached the third generation. Pietro and Giovanni Ferrero, sons of Michele and Maria Franca, worked together at the top of the Group as Managing Directors for more than 10 years. In April 2011, Pietro Ferrero tragically died in South Africa while working on a humanitarian mission, inspired and driven by him, that aimed to relaunch the Ferrero Social Enterprises. Today, Giovanni Ferrero continues to run the Company successfully, aiming to reach even more ambitious goals and ensuring that the company inspiration and motivation that was so strongly shared with his parents and his brother. Today, just as yesterday, it is a structure based on solid family values. In short, behind the trademark, the turnover and the expansion of a multinational company, there is the story of a brilliant and strong-willed Piedmontese family that gathers its extraordinary strength for growth from the Ferrero Foundation’s motto: “Work Create Donate”.