How Algida came to account for 14% of ice-cream market in a single year

"We invested around 50% more than all our rivals put together," says Daniel Barbulescu, head of Unilever's ice-cream unit, without providing further details about the net invested sums. He adds Algida is set to make heavy promotion and distribution investments this year, as well. The new unit Unilever brought in Romania in 2009 sold around 30 million ice-creams. In terms of value, sales can be put at 15-20m euros. However, Barbulescu expects the big rivals on the market to be more aggressive this year, after in 2009 Algida was the only player with a nationwide promotion campaign. Most Romanian producers last year had marketing budgets of below half a million euros, while Algida's promotion investments were worth millions of euros. 2009 was the first year Unilever's ice-cream unit operated domestically. Unilever representatives say that at the end of the 2009 summer the company's ice-cream unit accounted for 14% of the market in terms of value.