Ice-Fili and the Russian Ice Cream MarketThe Russian ice cream market is worth $500 million, with Ice Fili as the market leader. Industry concentration, determined by the market share of the four largest companies in an industry, is low for the Russian ice cream industry. This indicates that the sector is highly fragmented and competitive. The industry has seen a low growth rate of around 3.5% over the past two years, and other factors influencing the overall market size, such as population and per capita ice cream consumption, have remained stagnant over the years. years. External factors, such as the shrinking frozen food import market, coupled with low barriers to entry, have caused an increase in the number of new entrants into the ice cream market. Ice-Fili is a traditional Russian product that has been a market leader in the Russian ice cream industry. cream industry, but over the years the supremacy and competitive advantage have been declining. Thanks to its traditional expertise it has many capabilities, many of which lie unused. Of its capacity of 200 tons per day, it uses only about 25% (with an annual output of 16,000 tons, assuming 300 working days). Ice-Fili has also followed the strategy of sourcing the majority of its supplies from the domestic market and therefore in the short term it is relatively immune to imports and therefore to any negative international events. In recent years Ice-Fili has invested heavily in upgrading its machinery so much so that approximately 75% of the current machinery is new generation. This is one of the strengths of Ice-Fili operations and can be exploited. The company is also at the forefront of innovation and has already received recognition for introducing innovative products. This is one of the company's strengths as innovative products will help differentiate its products from other competitive products and new products can have an exclusive branding compared to other flagship products of the Soviet era. The ice cream space in Russia can be viewed in the context of three strategic groups namely –1. International players2. Traditional producers3. Local playersTraditional producersTraditional producers are the ice cream producers of the former Soviet Union that were privatized following the dissolution of the USSR. They prefer to use natural ingredients compared to multinationals that use preservatives. They have not traditionally been big proponents of marketing, and their marketing expenses make up 1% of their overall revenue. To date, they have been the market leaders on the Russian markets, but most of them have old systems and technologies.