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The Magnum Ice Cream Company (TMICC) is placing a big bet on its Wall’s Refreshments portfolio. With a renewed focus on innovation and market expansion, Wall’s is positioning its Refreshments brands at the forefront of its growth strategy.
“TMICC has set a mid-term growth target of 3–5%. Our Wall’s Refreshments brands have the ambition to deliver double that,” says Leyal Eskin Yilmaz, TMICC’s Chief Marketing Officer for Europe and Australia & New Zealand.
She explains how Wall’s Refreshments is leveraging consumer trends and smart licensing with best-in-class partners to deliver brand connections and growth that goes beyond its products and packs.
Solero is TMICC’s most profitable brand in Europe, Australia and New Zealand, but five years ago its only significant market was the UK.
“It was a sleeping beauty,” acknowledges Leyal. “In 2020, however, sales among 25–45-year-olds started to take off. It was as if they’d woken up to what it had to offer.”
Solero is produced in the same way as Magnum. But instead of using chocolate, it’s dipped in real fruit juice that’s rapid frozen to create a refreshingly tangy coating. Both brands deliver premium indulgence, but the same-sized Solero comes in at a cool 98 calories.
As more consumers seek out permissible indulgence, Solero products have been added to more shopping baskets, doubling the brand’s business size.
From the UK, Solero has expanded into Spain, France, Italy and Portugal. It increased from one variant to four. Two new mini multi-packs have been added and 2026 will see new Solero snacking options beyond the stick, and expansion into other markets.
This year, the UK team also trialled a brand partnership with Love Island, the No.1 reality TV show in the UK and Europe. “From Solero bikinis to floaties, we saw content that placed Solero at the heart of culture. We aim to work with TikTok and Meta to do more,” Leyal adds.
Refreshments’ mix of water, ice and fruit flavours typically make the products more accessible to younger family members than something that’s dairy and chocolate. But their ability to quench thirst also makes them age-agnostic. “My kids love them, but so does my mum,” Leyal says.
“We take great care that our products meet the nutritional standards that make them allowable for everyone,” she adds. “These brands are both delicious and permissible and we make their calorific, sugar and fat intake very clear.”
Twister’s iconic shape and contrasting milky and fruit flavours have seen the brand become Refreshments’ most consistent growth engine.
New flavours, a plant-based braid format, minis and multi-packs have made Twister a €100 million brand globally. With a product architecture that’s hard to imitate, it’s the No.1 bestseller in UK, Europe and Türkiye, and growing in India and Asia.
While Twister blends creamy and fruity elements in its signature swirl, Calippo is a pure water ice. Its tube packaging also gives consumers the choice to bite it, lick it or sip it.
“Calippo is also sold in almost every country in Europe. This wide availability also delivers consistent growth,” Leyal adds. But there’s more to come in 2026, with work underway to leverage both brands’ universal availability and family appeal.”
Unilever has had a licensing partnership with Haribo to create push-up ice creams with gummy bears in the stick since 2011. Until recently, production was limited to 1 million units per year for out-of-home sales. “But we’ve unlocked capacity that’s allowed us to launch in 20+ markets and realise high double-digit growth,” Leyal says.
This enabled TMICC to launch Haribo Push-Up multi-packs for in-home sales. The product ranked in Aldi supermarket’s top five ice cream innovations for 2025 and sales of Haribo ice cream have grown 68% in the year to date.
The success of this collaboration alongside the launch of Wall’s Minecraft ice cream in July is a strong signal of more licensing partnerships to come.
“Ingredient-led collaborations like the one with Haribo, which saw us work together on an ice cream that included its gummy bears, have evergreen potential. But entertainment collaborations with games and movies that take control of the zeitgeist are also a great way to make our ice creams relevant to the next generation of consumers,” Leyal says.
“And there’s lots of ways we can do that with our Refreshment brands. In packaging, we can make sticks edible and print numbers and designs. We can also add QR codes on wrappers or under lids. These can deliver a back-end experience that ties the story back to consumers, makes us a touchpoint for our partners’ fanbase experience and creates a whole new way of demand generation.”
Wall’s Refreshments is nearly a €500 million operation across Europe and ANZ. With strong brand performance, geographic expansion and innovation driving relevance across markets and formats, the business is unlocking new value.
“This summer’s performance of our Power Brands Solero, Twister and Calippo is a good indication of that. Together, their combined sales achieved double-digit growth in Europe during June to August,” Leyal says.
“Refreshments is an exciting and growing portfolio,” she adds. “We’re ready to unlock our Power Brands’ potential, reaching, up, down and wide to meet every need, at every price in every format.”
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