Mondelēz CEO says Biscoff will play “unique role” in snack giant’s portfolio

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The addition of the Biscoff cookie to Mondelēz International’s portfolio gives the Oreo maker exposure to a “unique” asset it doesn’t already own, the company’s CEO said in an interview. 

Mondelēz and Lotus Bakeries, which owns the Biscoff caramelized biscuit, announced last week a partnership to develop chocolate products combining the taste and texture of the popular cookie with Mondelēz’s Cadbury, Milka and other chocolate brands in Europe. The agreement came with an option to expand globally. 

“Biscoff is unique. We don’t have anything in our range that is like Biscoff. The taste. The way it’s positioned,” Dirk Van de Put, Mondelēz’s CEO, said in an interview. “It’s going to play a unique role in our portfolio. That’s why we were interested in doing this [partnership.]”

The first co-branded products are expected to launch in early 2025, with Cadbury and Biscoff in the United Kingdom as well as Milka and Biscoff in Europe. 

Van de Put said the companies are already testing products. The first item they expect to launch will be Biscoff filling in a chocolate bar. It would replicate Mondelēz’s popular Milka bar extension filled with Oreo.

“We’re thinking as a first step, we can certainly start doing the same that we’ve done with Oreo,” Van de Put said. “It’s going to be in the top three selling items in our chocolate range around the world eventually.”

Down the line, Mondelēz and Lotus could consider other offerings such as a chocolate-covered Biscoff, though he cautioned such an innovation is “not yet in the pipeline.”

“Over time, we will come up with innovations that will use the Biscoff brand in more creative ways than just having the filling in our chocolate,” Van de Put predicted.

Jan Boone, CEO of Lotus Bakeries, first connected seven years ago with Van de Put when he was named CEO of Mondelēz. Boone called to congratulate him. Both executives are from Belgium.

Several years later they started talking about a partnership. The executives said Biscoff and Oreo are complementary to each other and have different taste profiles. Biscoff is often consumed with coffee and tea, while Oreo is commonly associated with milk.

Boone said he was drawn to Mondelēz because of its global reach, its portfolio of brands that were complementary to Biscoff and the trust he had with the snacks maker. Biscoff traces its roots to a local Belgium bakery in 1932. Its recipe remains a closely guarded secret.

Boone also said he was attracted by how quickly Mondelēz brings products to market.

“It’s quite unique to see that within a larger company, to see that entrepreneurship,” Boone said.

Biscoff has grown into a top-five biscuit brand globally. Revenue for Biscoff rose 20% to more than $500 million in 2023 as Lotus continued to expand the brand internationally. 

Lotus wants the cookie to become the third-biggest biscuit brand in the world by sales, behind Mondelēz’s Chips Ahoy! and Oreo. About 6 billion Biscoff cookies are produced annually. 

For Lotus to reach its goal of turning Biscoff into a truly global product, it needed to “conquer” India and tap into its population of nearly 1.5 billion people, Boone said. “For us, it was always a struggle,” he added.

Mondelēz, with $36 billion in global revenue, has been in India for 70 years. The country generates about $2 billion in revenue for the company, with much of it coming from Cadbury where Mondelēz has a 65% share of India’s chocolate market.

A decade ago, Mondelēz entered the biscuit space In India with a kid-oriented brand and Oreo, which has rapidly become the third-largest market for the sandwich cookie. In order to scale its biscuit presence in the South Asian country beyond chocolate, Van de Put said Mondelēz needed to add more brands.

“You can’t just have one brand of cookies and be 30%, 40% of the biscuit market. That’s not doable,” he said. “You need several brands and we were looking for” one like Biscoff to add to our portfolio in India.

Both executives expect the partnership between Mondelēz and Lotus to last several years.

“It’s a long-term agreement. It’s a complex agreement. And that’s why you don’t do that for a couple of years,” Boone said. “It’s really long, long term. And I hope you’re sitting here and in 20 years we will be looking as happy as we are today.”