THEY make some of the world’s best-loved products. Their logos are instantly recognisable, their advertising jingles seared in shoppers’ brains. For investors, they promise steady returns in turbulent times. They seem to be getting ever bigger: on June 30th Mondelez International made a $23 billion bid for Hershey to create the world’s biggest confectioner; and on July 7th Danone, the world’s largest yogurt maker, agreed to buy WhiteWave Foods, a natural-food group, for $12.5 billion. Yet trouble lurks for the giants in consumer packaged goods (CPG), which also include firms such as General Mills, Nestlé, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. As one executive admits in a moment of candour, “We’re kind of fucked.”
