Swiss ice cream sales continue to melt: report

Residents slurped down 43.25 million litres of ice cream last year, a drop from 44 million litres in 2012, industry association Glace Suisse says in its annual report.

That’s below the 47.3 litres recorded in 2011 and well short of the record of 55.5 million litres consumed in 2003, when the population was smaller.

The association, which represents four companies manufacturing ice cream, involving 650 employees, has no explanation for why the market is slowly melting.

Over ten years, consumption in Switzerland has fallen ten percent.

The four companies represented by the association are Lucerne-based Emmi, Bern-based Giolito, Unillever (Lusso Ice Cream) based in Thayngen in the canton of Schaffhausen) and Nestlé with ice cream operations in Bursins (in the canton of Vaud) and Rorschach (in the canton of Saint Gallen).

Ice cream has been made industrially in Switzerland for almost 90 years, with the first products sold over the counter in Bern in 1925.

Producers export to many countries, topped by Russia, which imported 1.2 million litres last year, Glace Suisse said in its report.

Belgium was the biggest customer in the European Union, importing 911,000 litres, followed by France (456,000 litres) and Australia (359,000 litres).