Nestlé will invest R $ 7 billion in Brazil between 2025 and 2028. The resources will be used in factory modernization, capacity expansion, sustainability and innovation. In the previous triennium, the contribution was R $ 6.5 billion. “These investments are a seal to the Brazilian operation, which is Nestlé’s third largest worldwide,” says Marcelo Melchior, CEO of Nestlé Brasil. The country is only behind the US and China.
Last year, Nestlé Brasil’s revenue was 4.040 billion Swiss francs, the equivalent of about $ 27 billion. In 2023, it had been 4,131 billion Swiss francs, around R $ 24 billion. The rise was around 15%.
According to Melchior, investments allow Nestlé factories to follow the technological level of others from the food manufacturer around the world. Nestlé’s new Purina unit for Animal Nutrition in Vargeão (SC), for example, operates in the concept of Industry 4.0, with Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics in Industrial Processes.
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“We have a control center that allows you to see the provisions of all factories and indicators that show whether machines can break or are smaller than expected,” he says. “The machines also talk to each other to ask for supplies and call autonomous cars that refuel them.”
The Santa Catarina unit has received an investment of R $ 2.5 billion from the previous cycle and will allow Brazil to become the export platform for Latin America, USA and Europe, especially in damp foods for dogs and cats.
Another factory that will be modernized in the new phase of investments is coffee, erected by Nestlé in 1921, in Araras (SP). Originally inaugurated to produce girls, she became one of the largest units of the group and is an exporter of Nescafé.
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In addition to production, Nestlé’s investments are also used to develop suppliers. According to Melchior, in the last ten years it has become important to know the origin, environmental and sanitary practices of the entire chain. “Until then, we were concerned with the quality of milk, coffee and cocoa,” he says. “Today we make monthly meetings with suppliers from different areas of production, who exchange experiences and share gains and best practices.”
Melchior also says that there is a concern for new generations, so that children of producers are established in the countryside and encourage the use of technological innovations such as drones, artificial intelligence and bioinsums.
“It is important that these young people are motivated to stay and believe in the future of the business, which is no longer like before, with simple and distant people from innovation,” he says. “When they understand, for example, the effect that a coffee harvested in southern Minas Gerais, with a certain rooring, can achieve in a consumer market like Sao Paulo, they are very stimulated.”
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With the operation impacted by inflation in two of its most important raw materials, Cocoa and Café, Nestlé has been looking for alternatives to circumvent the high price. “Both were affected by climate events, but coffee, which is a more resilient industry, has already normalized,” he says. “Even so, this effect has caused us so that we had to reinvent many ways to do things.” In addition to advertising campaigns and promotions, this involved product development.
Nestlé employs more than 30,000 people in Brazil and has 18 factories in Sao Paulo, Minas Gerais, Bahia, Pernambuco, Goiás, Rio Grande do Sul and Espírito Santo, as well as 12 distribution centers and more than 70 brokers (responsible for sales, promotions, merchandising, storage and distribution).
