“The world evolves, Nestlé has to adapt”. Consumer habits put large companies at risk.
A Nestlé announced last week that it plans lay off 16 thousand workers all over the world. These layoffs are expected to take place over the next two years.
Nestlé presented its third quarter results: sales fell by 1.9%, to 71 billion euros.
“The world evolves and Nestlé has to adapt more quickly”implying “taking difficult but necessary decisions to reduce employees”, said the president of the multinational, the Austrian-Swiss Philip Navratil, who took office at the beginning of September.
The business cluster has more than two thousand brands, including Nescafé, Maggi KitKat, among others, and experienced a busy month of September, with the departure of the then general director, the Frenchman Laurent Freixe, and the previous president, the Belgian Paul Bulcke.
It’s not just Nestlé: this evolution, the change in consumer tastes and consumption habits, put “Big Food” at riskthe big food companies.
As preferences change, the model of conglomerate gives in and the medicines for weight loss they are taking over large shares of the market, summarizes .
This Nestlé announcement comes a month after the Kraft Heinz have announced plans to split into two independent, publicly traded companies: one with condiments and boxed foods (Heinz ketchup, or Philadelphia cheese), the other with grocery staples (Oscar Mayer hot dogs, Kraft Singles and Lunchables).
Os Food giants are facing pressure from diverse forcesincluding consumers abandoning processed foods; and the growing popularity of GLP-1 drugs, which have revolutionized the treatment of obesity.
At a macro level, the global trade war and the volatile costs of raw materials are not forgotten – Nestlé has to deal with rising cocoa prices.
