In a room full of screens that monitor the performance of Nestlé’s 16 factories in Brazil in almost real time, experts monitor safety, maintenance, energy efficiency and quality indicators at the Technical Competence Center, in Araras, in the interior of São Paulo. This is where the company tries to anticipate problems before they affect production.
The structure is part of Nestlé’s digital transformation strategy and is next to the Araras manufacturing plant, opened in 1921 and considered one of the Swiss multinational’s most important in the world for the coffee business. The location will also be one of the main beneficiaries of the new R$7 billion investment cycle.
Of the total, it will be used to modernize and expand the Araras plant, which produces Nescau, Nesquik, Nutren, Puravida products and professional line chocolate products, in addition to manufacturing all can lids and bottoms used by Nestlé in the country.
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The expansion includes a new extraction tower – a process whose structure has remained almost unchanged for more than 60 years – in addition to the digitalization of processes, industrial automation and an increase of approximately 10% in the production capacity of soluble coffee.
AI to anticipate problems
More than investing in equipment, Nestlé states that its digital transformation strategy involves a cultural change. “The transformation is done by people. Technology will help, but as a support”, said Gustavo Moura, executive manager of digital transformation at the Araras factory.
According to Moura, the company’s strategy is based on three pillars: people, external collaboration and focus on the business. “There is no point in thinking that we will be able to carry out this entire transformation alone. It will be done in partnership with startups and research and innovation centers”, he said.
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In recent years, the increased digitalization of industrial operations has significantly increased the amount of data generated by factories. The mission of the team led by Moura is to transform this information into operational decisions.
At the monitoring center installed in Araras, experts monitor information from all of the company’s Brazilian factories in practically real time. The system, developed internally, crosses indicators of safety, maintenance, adherence to procedures, energy consumption, operational performance and alerts generated by artificial intelligence models.
The company also started using generative artificial intelligence to summarize events, identify deviations and produce automatic reports in natural language. Information is sent to factory managers throughout the day, allowing for faster responses to potential problems.
“The system itself identifies trends, writes the text and sends it to the factory management team so that we can act before any deviation in quality, performance or efficiency occurs,” said Moura.
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The importance of unity helps explain the priority in investments. Opened in 1921, the Araras factory was Nestlé’s first in Brazil and Latin America. Today, the industrial complex occupies an area approximately 1.2 kilometers long, brings together three production areas and exports coffee to approximately 60 countries.
“We produce almost 29 thousand tons of coffee. Of this, part goes to the domestic market and the other for export: we send it to 60 countries”, said Fabio Kuhn, director of the Araras factory, during a visit by journalists to the unit.
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According to Kuhn, Araras is among the main Nescafé factories in the world, alongside units such as Toluca, in Mexico, and Girona, in Spain.
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Coffee: global priority
The coffee business gained relevance within Nestlé’s global strategy. The segment is one of the company’s four priority pillars, alongside PetCare, Health and Nutrition, and Food and Snacks. Brazil, in turn, is Nestlé’s third largest market in the world and occupies a strategic position for the expansion of the category.
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Valeria Pardal, Business Executive Officer of Nescafé Brasil, stated that the coffee business has more than doubled in size in the last five years and that the company intends to continue expanding investments in the segment.
“Brazil is a strategic market for Nestlé,” he said, in a note sent to InfoMoney. “We have led the transformation of the coffee category with an approach that combines quality, innovation and sustainability”, he summarized in the note.
The expansion of the Araras factory will serve to support this pillar. Currently, the unit produces around 28.5 thousand tons of Nescafé per year, works with more than 110 SKUs linked to the coffee business and is expected to expand its soluble coffee production capacity from 40 thousand to 44 thousand tons after the completion of the updates foreseen in the investment plan. For 2026, an increase of 27% in soluble coffee exports alone is expected.
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*The reporter visited the Nestlé factory in Araras at the invitation of Nescafé.
