Are you thinking about sweet Halloween treats? Go on, it's good for you. Candy really started as something most people didn’t want: Medicine.
The first candy-making machine was invented by a pharmacist in 1947 to crank out medicated candy lozenges, according to candy historian Samira Kawash. Mary Poppins’ “spoonful of sugar,” was no myth—in the 18th century an apothecary would suspend an unpleasant-tasting medicine in sugar, Kawash once told Smithsonian Magazine.
These days, we don't need to be coerced into eating candy: the average American consumes an estimated 8 pounds of candy a year, and children eat even more.
That’s a lot of candy. U.S. consumers spend about $3.1 billion on candy just during the Halloween season, according to Statista.
Globally, the candy market was valued at $64 trillion in 2021 and is expected to reach over $81 trillion by 2027, according to market research firm Mordor Intelligence.
A sizable chunk of that goes to Mars Wrigley, a division of the American corporation Mars. Mars Wrigley is the biggest candy company in the world, according to both Mars and Candy Industry, an industry publication that covers the global confectionery industry. It's owned by the Mars family, and is among the largest privately held companies in the U.S. Mars Wrigley, which makes chocolate, chewing gum, mints and fruity confections raked in $20 billion in sales in 2020, a year when gum and mints overall took a hit. Some of their easily recognized brands include M&Ms, Lifesavers, Snickers, Skittles, Twix and Altoids.
Candy Industry's list of biggest candy companies in the world is based on estimates from a combination of manufacturer surveys, annual reports, media reports, private and published research, and analyst interviews. Most sales data is from 2020, and attempts to factor out industrial chocolate sales. Currencies have been converted based on the average exchange rate from January-October 2020.
These are the world’s biggest candy companies.
