1990s
The site became 74 acres, with 1,200 staff.[15] In 1993 the site consumed 150 million litres of milk per year. It could make 340 Mini Milk lollies per minute.[16]
In the early 1990s, Mars UK entered ice-cream production. Under division chairman Simon Rhodes, Unilever developed a new product, Magnum, but the head of Unilever UK strongly questioned whether customers would pay 80p for 'a glorified choc ice', as it had Belgian chocolate and real dairy ice cream. But despite much reservations by Unilever management on the increased cost of production, Magnum became the UK's best seller in one year, and has been for thirty years; without that intervention and innovation from Mars UK, the Unilever Magnum product would not have needed to have been developed. In response to British sales of Häagen-Dazs, Unilever introduced production of Ben & Jerry's, when Unilever bought the company in April 2000.{citation needed}
The site was one of four main factories in Europe that could make more than 100 million litres per year.[17] It made 110,000 tonnes of ice cream a year.[18]
In 1996 Nestlé complained to the OFT that Unilever operated unfair practices.[19] and Mars also complained that Unilever had exclusive deals with food distribution networks, that gave Unilever 70% of the UK ice cream production.[20] The OFT investigation was from July 1997.[21]
In the 1990s Nestlé UK made its ice creams at Hortonwood in Telford, employing around 200 people,[22] until October 2001, when Nestlé sold the ice-cream division, and the Telford site closed on November 2 2001.[23]
In the late 1997 the original Cotswold factory closed; it was making the much-loved Arctic roll product, with around eighty redundancies; the site was largely totally redeveloped from the original 1960s site; automation was now advanced.[24] 84 staff had worked at the Cotswold factory.[25]
From January 1998 the company started weekend shifts. Before 1997, it had been Monday to Friday only. The site operated total productive maintenance.[26]
In August 1998 the company was told to change its distribution 'sweetener' deals by March 1999.[27]
