I’m not sure this is the story of “British” ice-cream. Unilever is a multinational company headquartered in London. But with their “Heartbrand” strategy they acquired local ice-cream brands and manufacturers and sell the same product line globally. So this story was the same in other countries as well. Cornetto was invented by an Italian company acquired later by Unilever and Magnum was from the Danish version. Currently they all belong to a Dutch multinational.

Also they dominated my local market (Turkey) not because they had better products than the local brands but because they had the distribution power of Unilever. Actually Turkish Competition Authority constantly warns and fines them [1]. Also their products with vegetable oils are not classified as “ice-cream” according to our laws. Actually one of their best selling products here is Maraş-style Turkish ice-cream, which is the only product line they use real milk and can be advertised as ice-cream.

[1]https://www.rekabet.gov.tr/en/Guncel/investigation-initiated...

[2]https://www.algida.com.tr/markalar/algida-maras.html