Nestle to begin selling new green KitKat in Europe
European chocolate lovers are about to get an injection of Japanese culture, as Nestle’s green-tea matcha KitKat launches across the continent.
The confectionery brand will begin to sell the green chocolate bar in Europe this month, 15 years after it was created in Japan.
The blend of imported green-tea matcha powder with cocoa butter and white chocolate will be made at Nestle’s factory in Hamburg.
It will be sold initially in eight countries, including Germany, the UK, Italy, and Switzerland, before going wider. Japan’s $5 (€4.4bn) chocolate confectionery market is Asia’s largest, according to Euromonitor International, and it is KitKat’s most popular.
The green-tea matcha bar lands in the top three favourite of its 350 products in the country. Globally, KitKat accounted for more than €884m of Nestle’s confectionery sales last year. It has an organic growth rate of 9%, exceeding Nestle’s confectionery growth of 3% in 2018.
Green-tea matcha is a powdered green tea that is deeply rooted in Japanese culture and is often used as part of an elaborate tea ceremony in the country.
The tea has become increasingly popular in Europe in recent years, especially in matcha green-tea lattes. The launch comes a year after Nestle sold its US confectionery unit to Italian Nutella maker Ferrero for $2.8bn. Unloading the unit demonstrated Nestle’s shift toward faster-growing categories like coffee, pet food, and water.
Bloomberg
