Australian snub for Ferrero. The Alba (Cuneo, Italy) confectionery group has experienced a series of problems growing hazelnuts in Riverina, the agricultural region in New South Wales, Australia, where an investment begun a good ten years ago has proved unsuccessful. No dice, Riverina's hazelnut orchard and its million-plus $70 million hazelnuts will be removed and the land will become a freehold. The deal, writes Milano Finanza, had begun by buying two large potato companies, Dellapool and Arrambee, then run by the Rich Listers Menegazzo Group. The project had started under the best auspices to grow hazelnuts and thus have a new and large reserve of raw material to produce Nutella and all the other so-products that have made the confectionery group great, especially since water was available in large quantities and the soil also seemed right. The goal was to harvest 5,000 tons of hazelnuts ready for food processing by 2022. Yet this was not the case since hazelnuts are not plants native to Australia, so it is excessively difficult to grow them successfully in that part of the world. In fact, this is what resulted in a loss-making harvest. Ferrero had gone so far as to spend more than $143 million to push the Australian soil to produce hazelnuts, but has now had to surrender to the climatic factor. Only less than half of the investment has been recovered: the Alba-based giant will have to look elsewhere for hazelnut supplies.