How Smarter, Warmer Freezers Are Boosting Ice Cream Sales for Unilever

Deep inside a vast room filled with pipes, tubes and hoses, shiny silver vats and a conveyor belt brimming with ice cream bars, Andy Sztehlo points toward a glass-topped freezer and urges visitors to grab a Cornetto, Magnum or Twister. “The biggest dissatisfaction with ice cream is not finding the one you want,” says Sztehlo, head of ice cream research and development for Unilever Plc, the world’s biggest producer of the frozen treat. The freezer in question is designed to ensure that overheated, sugar-craving consumers can get their hands on exactly the ice-cold indulgence they want.

The idea was developed at Unilever’s primary research center, a leafy campus in the English town of Colworth, an hour north of London by train, where the company has come up with innovations ranging from frozen peas and pyramid tea bags to the science used in home pregnancy tests. The freezer is part of a two-pronged initiative for Unilever: making its products more available to more people and cutting the carbon emissions required to do so.