Ferrero POLITICAL

Corporate Structure & Primary Mission

Ferrero’s core legal entities are Ferrero SpA, an Italian Società per azioni headquartered in Alba, Piedmont, and Ferrero International S.A., a Luxembourg-registered holding company ¹. Primary-source resolution now confirms Ferrero International S.A.’s registry identity: RCS (Luxembourg trade register) number B60814, VAT number LU17217953, registered/legal address 16, rue de Trèves, L-2633 Senningerberg, Luxembourg (address changed effective 25 January 2026, prior address not stated), legal form Société anonyme, entity status Active, creation date 29 September 1997, and NACE activity code 70.100 (“head office activities”), consistent with a holding/central-services role rather than an operating manufacturer ^{2, 3}. Its LEI is 529900BGTKMS0M5TCA40, initially registered 26 January 2018, last updated 26 January 2026 ³. The LEI record explicitly states “no known person” is reported for either the direct-parent or ultimate-parent relationship field - a sourced GLEIF/LEI self-disclosure gap, not a resolved ownership chain; the precise legal relationship between Ferrero International S.A. and Ferrero SpA remains undocumented by any primary filing reviewed ³. The Paperjam directory and a secondary news summary of a Ferrero Group press release both independently describe Ferrero International S.A. as “the holding company of the Ferrero Group” ^{2, 4}.

The Group is privately held and wholly owned by the Ferrero family across three generations, founded by Pietro Ferrero in 1946 and succeeded by son Michele and then grandsons Pietro Jr. and Giovanni ^{5, 1}. A previously flagged, low-reliability claim of a March 2026 “3F’s Holding S.A.” restructuring remains uncorroborated by any source reviewed; a different, independently verifiable March 2026 event has instead been confirmed: a Ferrero Group governance realignment announced via a PR Newswire release dated 4 March 2026, following a Board of Directors resolution dated 11 February 2026, effective 1 September 2026 ⁴. Under this realignment, Giovanni Ferrero retains the title President of Ferrero International S.A.; Alessandro Nervegna moved from Chief Strategy and Innovation Officer to CEO of Ferrero Core; and Lapo Civiletti moved from CEO of the Ferrero Group to President of Ferrero Ice Cream and WK Kellogg Co. while continuing as Vice President of Ferrero International S.A. - independently confirmed by the Paperjam Guide listing Civiletti as “Vice-President” under “Executive direction” ^{2, 4}. The press-release summary names no successor CEO of the Ferrero Group and does not clarify whether Civiletti’s new titles took effect on 1 September 2026 or another date ⁴.

Named subsidiaries include Burton’s Biscuit Company, Carambar & Co, Eat Natural, Fannie May, Ferrara Candy Company, Fox’s Biscuits, Keebler Company, Michel et Augustin, Mother’s Cookies, Royal Dansk, Thorntons, Wells Enterprises, and WK Kellogg Co, though no ownership percentages are disclosed for any of them ¹. Additional acquisitions documented in company history include Oltan Group (2014), Delacre/DeliChoc (2016), a Kelsen Group stake (2019), Fulfil Nutrition (2022), Fresystem SPA (2023), Dori Alimentos and Jelly Belly via Ferrara Candy (2023), Power Crunch (2025), and an announced Purely Elizabeth deal (2026) ¹. Ferrero’s primary mission as presented corporately is confectionery, biscuit, bakery, and “better-for-you” food manufacturing, now organized under Ferrero Core (CEO Alessandro Nervegna) and Ferrero Ice Cream/WK Kellogg Co (President Lapo Civiletti), both reporting to Giovanni Ferrero ^{6, 1, 4}. An attempt to independently verify the Luxembourg corporate registration via OpenCorporates was blocked by a bot-verification wall; a separate attempt to fetch DatoCapital.lu’s Luxembourg company record also failed (HTTP 403) ¹. Paperjam and the Bloomberg LEI record are treated as the two corroborating primary-adjacent sources for RCS B60814 in place of an official Luxembourg Business Registers (LBR) portal extract, which was not independently fetched ^{2, 3}.

Executive & Leadership Footprint

Giovanni Ferrero served as joint CEO with brother Pietro Ferrero from 1997, became sole CEO after Pietro’s death in April 2011, and took on the Executive Chairman role following father Michele Ferrero’s death in 2015, holding both CEO and Chairman titles for roughly two years before hiring Lapo Civiletti as the company’s first non-family CEO in 2017 ^{5, 1}. As of the March 2026 governance realignment, Giovanni Ferrero retains the title President of Ferrero International S.A., continuing to lead the Group’s overall growth agenda, with two new leadership roles reporting to him ⁴. Pietro Ferrero Jr. died in 2011 (heart attack while cycling in South Africa) and cannot be a current shareholder or board member; any aggregator claim implying otherwise should be discounted ⁵. He holds an estimated net worth of US$48.3 billion (2026), ranking him 37th richest globally and richest in Italy ^{6, 5}.

Lapo Civiletti’s title has been clarified by the March 2026 governance change: he moved from CEO of the Ferrero Group to President of Ferrero Ice Cream and WK Kellogg Co., while continuing as Vice President of Ferrero International S.A. - confirmed independently by Paperjam’s “Vice-President” listing ^{2, 4}. Alessandro Nervegna now holds the role of CEO of Ferrero Core, reporting to Giovanni Ferrero, dating the title already recorded on the corporate leadership page ^{6, 4}.

At the Italian operating-subsidiary level, Ferrero SpA announced a new board on 23 December 2025: Massimo Micieli was appointed President, succeeding Bartolomeo Salomone, who stepped down after six years on reaching retirement age; the announced board also includes Gian Mauro Perrone, Fabrizio Gavelli, Matteo Ravera, and Paolo Vertemati. This is the Italian subsidiary-level board, distinct from Ferrero International S.A.’s top holding-company leadership, for which no equivalent board disclosure was located. No name-specific search for Israel/Palestine-related statements, donations, or board affiliations was run on any of these five individuals; this remains an open line rather than a confirmed absence.

Giovanni Ferrero’s Wikipedia biography records no board memberships outside Ferrero and no mention of Israel, Palestine, the Middle East, geopolitics, advocacy organizations, or lobbying affiliations ⁵. No public evidence identified of any statement by Giovanni Ferrero or other named Ferrero Group executives regarding Israel, Gaza, or Palestine; unrelated namesakes such as Benita Ferrero-Waldner and Eduardo Ferrero surfaced in searches but have no connection to the Ferrero Group. A full enumeration of Ferrero International S.A.’s board of directors and any shareholders holding ≥10% beyond the Ferrero family in aggregate was not located, and because the company is privately held and not SEC-registered, no proxy-style disclosure of individual equity stakes exists.

Operations in Occupied or Contested Territories

No public evidence identified of a Ferrero manufacturing facility, equipment sale, service contract, dealership, or subsidiary activity located within an internationally recognized occupied or contested territory (West Bank, East Jerusalem, Golan Heights, or an Israeli settlement), based on review of Human Rights Watch’s dedicated settlement-business report, the Who Profits database interface, and general web search ^{7, 8}. HRW’s Occupation, Inc. (2016) names other companies - including Heidelberg Cement/Hanson, a Barkan textile manufacturer, a US real-estate franchise, an Israeli bank, and a waste-management company - in the roughly first quarter of the document retrieved, with no mention of Ferrero, Nutella, or Kinder appearing in that portion; the remaining three-quarters of the report was not read within the research budget, making this a partial-coverage finding rather than a confirmed absence across the full document ⁷. A Turkish consumer-boycott aggregator page asserts Ferrero “has an office in Holon, Israel,” that it “partnered with the Israeli sugar company Sugar Incredo,” and that Israel-directed investment runs “through Teseo Capital,” but cites no source, document, date, or named official for any of the three claims, attributing them only to unnamed “some circles”; these claims are unverified and should not be treated as established fact ⁹. Ferrero’s own Israel corporate page states operations there began in 2016 through a named third-party distributor, “Premium Confectionery & Trading Company Ltd,” with a local team operating from an office in Holon - Holon is within Israel’s internationally recognized 1949 territory, not a settlement or the Occupied Palestinian Territories ¹⁰. A supplementary search-snippet (not independently fetched) indicates Ferrero’s prior Israeli import arrangement had been with Leiman Schlussel, which reportedly held a 44-year exclusive import franchise that ended when Ferrero “brought distribution in-house” in 2016 - i.e., the 2016 move represented termination of a decades-long third-party importer relationship rather than a first market entry, consistent with Nutella having been sold in Israel since 1975 ¹¹. The distributor Premium Confectionery & Trading Company Ltd’s own corporate registration, ownership, and any connection to Israeli state, military, or settlement entities was not independently verified across two research passes; the Israeli Registrar of Companies was not queried due to budget constraints, and this remains an unresolved gap. A Ferrero job listing confirms an operational team presence at Holon, Israel, consistent with the corporate page ¹². A live fetch of the Who Profits company-search interface for “Ferrero” did not return a clearly filtered result set, leaving this line inconclusive rather than a confirmed negative ⁸.

A new lead from Il Fatto Alimentare (Italian food-industry outlet), dated 4 August 2025 - after both the 19 July 2024 ICJ Advisory Opinion and the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants - names Ferrero, alongside Mutti, Campari, and Rummo, as among “the main exporters” of Italian food products to Israel, stating these companies show no sign of changing their commercial relationships with Israel in the context of the Gaza war ¹³. The article gives no Ferrero-specific figures, contract details, export volumes, or named product line; the claim is made at the level of a named group of brands rather than Ferrero individually with supporting trade data ¹³. The article separately floats, as the author’s own stated wish rather than a reported fact, that Ferrero might someday stop selling Nutella in Israeli supermarkets - this is explicitly editorial opinion, not a reported corporate statement or event, and should not be conflated with the sourced “major exporter” characterization ¹³. This “major exporter” claim is not independently corroborated against Italian or Israeli customs/trade-flow statistics, and no underlying trade-data primary source is cited in the retrieved portion of the article; it should be treated as a named lead requiring independent verification rather than a confirmed quantified trade relationship.

A coalition led by the Rete Cuneese per la Palestina - a Piedmont-based civil-society network - opened what it describes as a “formal dialogue” with Ferrero S.p.A. on 6 December 2025, sending a letter to the company’s press office requesting clarification of its economic activities in Israel ^{14, 15, 16}. The letter, framed explicitly as “una richiesta di chiarimento” rather than an accusation, asks Ferrero to state: (1) whether it has economic or partnership relations with Israeli companies beyond local distribution; (2) whether it has supply, research, or technology agreements with Israeli entities and whether these are assessed under ethical due diligence; (3) whether it possesses production sites, warehouses, or activities in “aree considerate territori occupati” (areas considered occupied territories); and (4) whether it will publish a social-responsibility policy specific to commercial relations in conflict or human-rights contexts ¹⁴. The letter cites Ferrero’s own public materials - its Israel corporate page and job listings - identifying the local operating entity as Ferrero Premium Confectionery & Trading Ltd, based at the Azrieli Center in Holon, and notes Nutella’s presence in the Israeli market dating to 1975, matching facts already recorded elsewhere in this audit ^{14, 10}.

Signatories of the letter, as named across the local outlets reviewed, include ANPI, CGIL Cuneo, Legambiente Langhe e Roero, BDS Pinerolo, USB Piemonte, ACLI Asti, and the local coordinating groups Cuneo per Gaza and Torino x Gaza, with Cuneo24 and Gazzetta d’Alba both reporting “oltre quaranta” (over forty) signatory organizations in total ^{16, 17}. As of 21 January 2026, Pressenza, Gazzetta d’Alba, Cuneo24, and Targatocn all independently reported that Ferrero had not replied to the letter - Pressenza’s headline states Ferrero “non risponde” and its text gives the specific elapsed period “dal 6 dicembre scorso ad oggi, 21 gennaio 2026,” while Gazzetta d’Alba’s subtitle is “ancora senza risposta” ^{15, 14, 16, 17}. No source reviewed in this pass reports any subsequent Ferrero reply at any later date; a July 2026 Targatocn report on the Rete’s continuing monthly Bra protest (marking “mille giorni” since 7 October 2023) and an August 2026 La Voce di Alba report on the group’s ongoing monthly presidio in Bra both describe the campaign’s continuation into mid-2026 but make no further mention of Ferrero, the letter, or any reply from the company - indicating the specific Ferrero-letter thread was not the subject of later coverage located, not that it was resolved ^{18, 19}. A letter to the editor published by Targatocn on 21 January 2026, from Davide Cavaliere, president of the Associazione Italia-Israele di Cuneo, publicly opposed the Rete’s request, characterizing it as an implicitly anti-Israel pressure campaign against a private company, disputing the evidentiary basis for claims of Israeli human-rights violations, and asking why the Rete does not raise equivalent questions about companies operating in China regarding Uyghurs in Xinjiang; this op-ed itself reports no Ferrero response and does not resolve whether the campaign continued to focus specifically on Ferrero after January 2026 ²⁰.

Il Fatto Alimentare’s 4 August 2025 article states that the publication wrote to Italy’s largest food companies and supermarket chains asking them to state a position on trade with Israel in the context of the war in Gaza, and reports “Non sono arrivate risposte” (no replies arrived) ¹³. The same article separately names Ferrero, alongside Mutti, Campari, and Rummo, as among “i principali esportatori” (the main exporters) of Italian food products to Israel who show no sign of changing their commercial relationships - this characterization of Ferrero as a non-responsive major exporter is made at the level of the named group, with the “no replies” statement applying collectively to the outlet’s outreach to major food companies and retail chains rather than being phrased as a Ferrero-specific quote in the passage retrieved ¹³. This is consistent with, and elaborates on, the Il Fatto Alimentare finding already recorded elsewhere in this audit ¹³.

Brand Heritage & State Partnerships

Nutella was the first Ferrero brand sold in Israel, dating to 1975, with formal Israeli market operations beginning in 2016 through the named distributor Premium Confectionery & Trading Company Ltd, which replaced a reported 44-year exclusive import arrangement previously held by Leiman Schlussel ^{10, 11}. In September 2025, Ferrero launched “Nutella Plant-Based,” a parve/vegan spread, with Israel described as the first market outside Europe for the product; this was a product launch, not a manufacturing-plant announcement, and the source indicates no Ferrero manufacturing facility in Israel ²¹. The launch was announced via a quote from Alona Strod, Senior Brand Manager of Nutella at Ferrero in Israel ²¹. No public evidence identified of any state-partnership agreement, government co-branding arrangement, or defense/military-linked brand partnership involving Ferrero in Israel or elsewhere.

Internal Governance, Content & Retail Policies

Beyond the leadership figures named on Ferrero’s corporate leadership page (Giovanni Ferrero, Lapo Civiletti, Alessandro Nervegna) ⁶ and the newly identified Ferrero SpA board (Massimo Micieli, Bartolomeo Salomone (outgoing), Gian Mauro Perrone, Fabrizio Gavelli, Matteo Ravera, Paolo Vertemati), no further board of directors membership was identified in any source reviewed. No internal governance documents, content-moderation policies, or retail-conduct policies specific to Israel/Palestine-related issues were located in any source reviewed across this audit. No public evidence identified of a Ferrero code of conduct, retail policy, or internal directive addressing operations in, or sourcing from, contested territories specifically.

Lobbying, Advocacy, Financing & Logistics

EU-level lobbying register (Ferrero International S.A.). A direct fetch of LobbyFacts.eu’s datacard confirms Ferrero International is registered in the EU Transparency Register under ID 04268127542-74 (first registered 23 December 2011), category “Companies & groups” ^{2, 3}. Declared lobbying costs: EUR 400,000–499,999 for the closed financial year September 2024–August 2025; EUR 500,000 declared for 2020–2023; EUR 400,000 for 2024; EUR 250,000 for 2013–2019; EUR 225,000 for 2010–2012 ³. 8 declared lobbyists / 2.2 FTE (2 people at 50%, 4 at 25%, 2 at 10%); 5 European Parliament accreditations current as of the page’s snapshot (Francesca Vetturini, Da Eun Choi, Francesco Tramontin, Ylenia Maitino, Irene Zancanaro), with 17 unique names across the 2012–2026 historical list ³. Registered affiliations confirmed exactly as examined: AIM (European Brands Association), CAOBISCO, FoodDrinkEurope, Toy Industries Europe, World Federation of Advertisers, EU Pledge, European Food Forum, EUROPEN, CEFLEX, Tropical Forest Alliance, plus one additional affiliation - FPI (Flexible Packaging Initiative) - not named in the originating question ³. Declared lobbying intermediaries for the closed year: rud pedersen brussels (EUR 50,000–99,999), Schuttelaar & Partners (EUR 25,000–49,999), SoWhatCommunications (EUR 10,000–24,999) ³. This finding rests on the LobbyFacts secondary aggregator; a direct attempt to cross-verify against the EU Commission’s own primary Transparency Register page failed (HTTP 404, likely a deprecated/migrated URL), so the underlying primary EU record was not independently retrieved ³. A separate, unfetched search-snippet lead suggests the German Bundestag’s own national Lobbyregister (registrant R004584, Ferrero Deutschland GmbH, July 2026 snapshot) may show zero declared EU-policy lobbying expenditure for the same FY 2024–2025 - this is a different (national, not EU-level) register and was not reconciled against the LobbyFacts datacard within budget; it is flagged as an unresolved discrepancy rather than a refutation of the LobbyFacts figures ²².

European Commission high-level meetings. The same LobbyFacts datacard lists 11 high-level European Commission meetings for Ferrero ³: 11 July 2025, Brussels - customs legislation/rules-of-origin implementation dialogue, Cabinet of Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič; 19 May 2025, Versailles - “Compétitivité, Simplification,” Cabinet of EVP Stéphane Séjourné; 31 March 2025, Senningerberg, Luxembourg - “Courtesy visit and exchange of views on the vision and issues considered relevant by Ferrero,” Cabinet of Commissioner Christophe Hansen; 28 May 2024, Brussels - “EUDR,” filed under Cabinet of President Ursula von der Leyen, though LobbyFacts’ own attendee field records the officials present as Peter van Kemseke and Tomas Baert rather than von der Leyen personally; 12 April 2024, Brussels - food-waste-management research, Cabinet of Commissioner Janusz Wojciechowski (attendee Roberto Berutti); 21 June 2022, sustainable cocoa, Cabinet of EVP Valdis Dombrovskis; 26 October 2021, deforestation for cocoa (video call), Cabinet of EVP Frans Timmermans; 6 May 2021, sustainable cocoa (video conference), Cabinet of EVP Valdis Dombrovskis; 2 March 2021, EU conduct for responsible business/marketing practices, Cabinet of EVP Frans Timmermans; 8 October 2018, Ireland - food production, Commissioner Phil Hogan personally; 28 September 2017, Brussels - dual quality of products, Cabinet of Commissioner Věra Jourová ³. LobbyFacts itself flags that Commission data “may include duplicate meeting entries” and that Ferrero did not name a person responsible for EU relations, citing GDPR ³. This meeting log was not independently cross-checked against the EU Commission’s own primary meeting-transparency database, as the legacy consultation URL fetch attempt failed ³.

EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) joint advocacy, October–November 2025. The Business & Human Rights Resource Centre records a cross-commodity joint letter dated 2 October 2025 (updated 3 October 2025), addressed to Commissioner Jessika Roswall, opposing a further delay to and reopening of the EU Deforestation Regulation ²³. A direct fetch confirms Ferrero as a named signatory alongside at least Interholco (part of Danzer), Mars, Nestlé, Olam, Precious Woods, Rougier, Socfin, and Tony’s Chocolonely - nine signatories were visible in the fetched page body, with the remainder of the stated 26 total signatories/organisations listed only in an attached PDF that could not be retrieved after two fetch attempts (HTTP 500 both times), so the complete 26-name list was not independently verified ²³. Packaging Europe’s secondary coverage (14 October 2025) corroborates Ferrero’s inclusion and adds that signatories recommended a “definitive (but reviewable) grace period of six months or less,” during which fines would be suspended and controls revisited - this specific detail is sourced to Packaging Europe’s paraphrase and not independently confirmed in the BHRRC-hosted letter text itself ²⁴. Signatories state they “remain on track to achieve full compliance with the EUDR obligations by 31 December 2025,” made investments “in good faith,” and argue a proposed delay (triggered by a cited EU IT-system capacity concern) “undermines trust in Europe’s regulatory commitments” ²³.

Ferrero’s own newsroom published a dated corporate advocacy statement, “Progress Can’t Wait: EUDR Now,” on 10 November 2025, reaffirming “strong support for a timely implementation of the EU Deforestation Regulation,” stating that “Timely enforcement of the EUDR is essential to keep momentum alive” and “Every pause risks undermining overall attempts to protect vulnerable forest regions,” and declaring “At Ferrero, we believe leadership means acting on our values”²⁵. The statement welcomes “the European Commission’s latest proposal, including a grace period,” and explicitly references a joint statement “alongside peers,” linking to the same 2 October 2025 letter addressed above - confirming the newsroom post functions as Ferrero’s own-channel amplification of that joint advocacy act ²⁵. The statement is attributed to Isabel Hochgesand, Chief Procurement & Hazelnut Company Officer, who joined Ferrero’s management team in 2023 after senior procurement roles at Procter & Gamble and Beiersdorf ²⁵. The page also describes Ferrero’s EUDR compliance approach as resting on a principle called “Sacco conosciuto” (“knowing what’s in your bag”), supplier-facing Commodity Charters, and two named third-party tools - Sourcemap (supply-chain mapping) and Starling, a satellite deforestation-monitoring system developed by Airbus Defence and Space - which Ferrero states cover “100% of its EUDR-relevant supply chains for palm oil, cocoa, and coffee” ²⁵.

US lobbying. Ferrero USA Inc. has disclosed federal lobbying activity, per a secondary summary source, conducted through Tiber Creek Group Inc. (primary registrant, since at least 2019) and Penn Avenue Partners ($50,000, Q3 2025), on issue areas including agricultural commodity sourcing (cocoa, hazelnuts, sugar), SNAP/food-assistance confectionery-eligibility rules, food-safety/labeling regulation, and trade/tariff policy, with cumulative spending since 2019 reported at over $1.1 million ²⁶. No Israel, Middle East, or foreign-policy issue is mentioned in that lobbying summary ²⁶. The underlying primary Lobbying Disclosure Act filings were not independently verified in full; however, the House Lobbying Disclosure clearinghouse independently confirms that Tiber Creek Group (House registrant ID 31587) lists Ferrero U.S.A., Inc. among its registered clients, corroborating the registrant relationship reported by the secondary summary - this clearinghouse listing shows registrant-client pairings only, with no filing dates, dollar figures, or issue-area codes, so the Penn Avenue Partners figure and the cumulative $1.1 million spending total remain sourced only to the secondary summary ²⁷. No public evidence identified of a Ferrero corporate PAC, FEC committee registration, or an OpenSecrets “Pro-Israel” category listing naming Ferrero. No public evidence identified linking Ferrero, the Ferrero family, or any Ferrero-controlled foundation to donations toward IDF, FIDF, JNF/KKL, or related military-welfare or settlement organizations.

Corporate and family foundations. Ferrero’s corporate Fondazione Ferrero (established 1983, Italy) states, per a live fetch of its own page, no formal mission statement but a guiding motto of “Work Create Donate,” centered on supporting “Ferrero Seniors” (employees with 25+ years of service), active/positive aging, and education/culture investment, with geographic scope limited to Alba, Italy (Via Vivaro 49); Villers-Écalles/Mont-Saint-Aignan, France (Welfare Unit since 2005); and Stadtallendorf, Germany (Ferrero Germany Social Initiative building, 2007) ²⁸. Activities include recreational/social/healthcare programs for seniors, intergenerational volunteering, art-history exhibitions, a Beppe Fenoglio Documentation Centre, employee-family scholarships, and scientific-research sponsorship. No mention of Israel, Palestine, the Middle East, or any political-advocacy activity or recipient appears anywhere on the fetched Fondazione Ferrero page. Maria Franca Ferrero is named as the foundation’s President, with no other officers named on the page.

Two US-registered nonprofits sharing the Ferrero surname were investigated further. The Sebastian Ferrero Foundation Inc (EIN 26-1200788, Gainesville, FL) files Form 990 (not 990-PF) across all available years (2007–2018); its most recent available return (FY2018, filed 22 Feb 2019) shows $0 in program service revenue and lists no grant recipients on the summary page retrieved, and ProPublica itself flags the organization summary “may be incomplete or out of date” ²⁹. Officers named: Horst Ferrero (Board Chair), William J. Rossi (Treasurer), Gilbert Levy (Director). Because this foundation files Form 990 rather than 990-PF, no Schedule I grant-recipient list exists to review in the filings ProPublica has indexed. No connection between this foundation and Ferrero S.p.A./Ferrero International’s controlling family was established beyond the shared surname, which remains a named-entity ambiguity ²⁹.

The Ferrero Family Foundation Inc (EIN 58-2348659, Gainesville, GA) has now failed primary-document retrieval twice across two separate research passes: an earlier ProPublica fetch aimed at this EIN returned an unrelated organization, “Canvas Foundation” (EIN 81-1755475), listing a “Steve Ferrero” as Vice Chairman with no stated mission or grant recipients ³⁰; a second attempt this audit, via a different candidate ProPublica organization-summary page, resolved instead to a second, entirely unrelated filer - “Gainesville Charitable Foundation” (EIN 59-2123620, Gainesville, Florida, a different Gainesville/state/EIN from the Georgia-based target), tax year 2021 (Form 990-PF filed 4 May 2022), reporting total revenue of $216,081, total expenses of $120,856, and charitable disbursements of $86,459 to ordinary Georgia/Florida civic organizations, with nine officers (Robin Bourg, Raymond M. Davis Jr., Dr. Seigfred Fagerberg, Dr. William Grene, Edward C. Jones Jr., Bruce Kirby, Dr. Milledge Murphey, James Ogles, Christine Stopka), none matching any Ferrero-surnamed individual ³¹. The Ferrero Family Foundation’s actual Form 990-PF has thus still not been successfully retrieved from any primary source across two independent attempts. Unverified third-party aggregator snippets (Grantable and GrantedAI) describe this foundation’s giving inconsistently: Grantable states FY2024 giving of approximately $8,800–$8,900 across 3 grants and FY2023 giving of $24,000 across 3 grants, while GrantedAI reports FY2023 grants paid of $9,000 (total giving $12,000, down from $48,000 in FY2022) and cumulative giving since inception of $57,000 across 9 grants, with officers named as Louis P. Ferrero (CEO/CFO) and family members Juliette F. Jarrard (Director), Judith I. Ferrero (Secretary), and Justin L. Ferrero (Director); these figures are mutually inconsistent across aggregators and none has been verified against the foundation’s own primary document; no recipient named in any aggregator snippet shows any plausible Israel/Palestine or political-advocacy connection, but this is an unverified secondary-source observation, not a primary-document finding ^{32, 33, 34}.

Corporate Communications & Public Stance

Ferrero has now been confirmed to issue dated, named-executive public policy statements - but to date, exclusively on the EU Deforestation Regulation, not on Israel/Palestine. The 10 November 2025 “Progress Can’t Wait” newsroom statement, attributed to Isabel Hochgesand (Chief Procurement & Hazelnut Company Officer), and the 2 October 2025 cross-commodity joint letter to Commissioner Jessika Roswall (confirmed signatory, alongside at least Mars, Nestlé, Olam, Socfin, Interholco, Precious Woods, Rougier, and Tony’s Chocolonely) together demonstrate Ferrero’s institutional willingness and capacity to take a public, dated, named position on a contested EU regulatory matter ^{23, 24, 25}. This closes the prior finding that no identified Ferrero advocacy act or corporate position statement of this kind existed - but only with respect to the EUDR/food-and-agricultural-trade-policy domain. No public evidence identified of any corporate statement, press release, or public position issued by Ferrero Group or its named executives regarding Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, or the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict, across all source classes reviewed (corporate website, Wikipedia, NGO databases, lobbying summaries, EU regulatory-advocacy pages, and boycott-tracking outlets).

No verifiable, sourced BDS or civil-society boycott campaign naming Ferrero was located ^{35, 36, 37}. L’Indipendente’s October 2023 Italian “brands to boycott” article - one of the more detailed sourced campaign-list pieces reviewed - does not list Ferrero, Nutella, or Kinder, instead naming Carrefour, McDonald’s, Starbucks, HP, Danone, Puma, Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Intel, L’Oréal, Siemens, and PepsiCo with specific sourced grounds for each ³⁵. The New Arab’s feature on Italian civil-society boycotts names specific products pulled from Coop-affiliated stores (tahini sauce, peanuts, SodaStream items) but does not mention Ferrero, Nutella, or Kinder ³⁶. The Turkish gazetebirlik.com page states boycott calls against Ferrero exist among “some consumer groups” but attributes them to no named campaign, organization, or document, and itself characterizes the Holon/Sugar Incredo/Teseo Capital links as “indirect” - an editorial hedge rather than a sourced finding ⁹. A direct fetch of Ethical Consumer’s Palestine boycott-target list - an independently maintained compilation of BDS-aligned priority-boycott companies (including Ahava, AXA, Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, Barclays, Carrefour, Coca-Cola, HP, Siemens, and SodaStream, among roughly three dozen named entries) - confirms Ferrero, Nutella, and Kinder are not named anywhere on that list, though this is one compiled secondary mirror of BDS-aligned targeting rather than a fetch of bdsmovement.net’s own page, which remained inaccessible to this audit’s verifier ³⁷. Il Fatto Alimentare (4 August 2025) is the first live-sourced instance of any outlet naming Ferrero specifically - alongside Mutti, Campari, and Rummo - as continuing ordinary commercial ties to Israel after both the ICJ Advisory Opinion and ICC arrest warrants, though this is a secondary characterization unverified against trade data and distinct from any boycott-campaign finding ¹³.

No public evidence identified of any reply, statement, or acknowledgment issued by Ferrero S.p.A. or Ferrero Group in response to the Rete Cuneese per la Palestina’s 6 December 2025 letter, across all outlets checked (Pressenza, Gazzetta d’Alba, Cuneo24, Targatocn, La Voce di Alba) through the most recent coverage located (August 2026); searches for Ferrero-specific replies dated February–October 2026 returned no corroborating result, and this remains a documented absence rather than a confirmed final non-response, since no outlet reviewed states that the matter was formally closed ^{14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19}.