Candy giant Ferrero to open innovation facility in Marshall Field building

Candy giant Ferrero will open a 45,000-square-foot innovation facility in the historic Marshall Field and Co. Building in the Loop next year, the company announced Thursday.

New Jersey-based Ferrero North America, which is part of the global confectionary company Ferrero Group, said in a news release that the new lab and offices on the building’s eighth and ninth floors will be completed in spring 2023.

Ferrero will transfer corporate employees from its Old Post Office location, though subsidiary Ferrara Candy Co. will maintain its headquarters at the Old Post Office, where it moved from Oakbrook Terrace in 2019. The Marshall Field office will be home to 170 employees, most of them already based in Chicago, according to vice president of corporate communications Cheryll Forsatz.

Research and development at the facility will be focused on new confectionery and sweet packaged foods products, according to Forsatz.

“Our goal for this space is to reflect Ferrero’s unique heritage and provide an opportunity to create greater synergies among our teams,” said Todd Siwak, president and chief business officer of Ferrero North America, in a statement.

The company said the move will take place in two phases, with employees moving into temporary office space in the Marshall Field building while construction is underway. Employees who work on cookies, cones and crusts brands including Keebler, Famous Amos, and Mother’s will move into the new facility, as will those who work on Fannie May, Forsatz said. Ferrara Candy Co. employees will remain in the company’s Old Post Office location.

The Marshall Field building was designated a Chicago landmark in 2005, the same year Federated Department Stores bought Field’s parent company and converted it into a Macy’s. In 2018, Macy’s sold the building’s upper floors to Brookfield Properties, an arm of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management. Brookfield redeveloped those floors into almost 650,000 square feet of office space.

Ferrero’s planned Marshall Field facility comes on top of another recent Illinois investment by the company.

Last month, the company announced plans for a $214.4 million expansion of its facility in downstate Bloomington, which it said would bring 200 jobs to the area. That expansion, which the company expects to be completed in 2024, comes after a $75 million investment into its first North American chocolate factory in Bloomington. The company broke ground on that project last year, and it is expected to be completed in spring 2023.

Siwak said Thursday he was proud of the company’s “growing footprint in Illinois.” The company employs 1,400 people in the state, said Forsatz.

“We are thrilled to join Ferrero as it announces that Chicago will be home to the company’s first innovation center in the United States,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in a statement Thursday. “Chicago is a global destination for innovation and Ferrero will be well-placed here, benefitting from the city’s connectivity to the world and its strong network of companies driven by tech and innovation.”

Lightfoot said she looked forward “to more companies realizing Chicago’s incredible potential.”

Last month, Kellogg Company announced it would split into three companies, with its snacks business headquartered in Chicago. Ferrero acquired a portion of Kellogg’s North American snacks business in 2019.

But the city has also faced recent high-profile abdications. In June, Caterpillar announced it was moving its headquarters from Deerfield to Texas. And in May, Boeing announced plans to move its global headquarters from Chicago to Virginia.

Ferrero was founded in Italy in 1946. In addition to its portions of Kellogg’s snacks business, it has within the last six years acquired Lemonheads-maker Ferrara Candy and chocolatier Fannie May, both Chicago-based companies, as well as Nestle’s U.S. candy business.