BOOST FOR COFFEE FARMERS AS NESTLÉ’S GLOBAL CEO PLEDGES CONTINUED SUPPORT

Nestlé, the world's leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company, has reaffirmed its commitment to continue offering technical support to coffee farmers, to help them increase their yields and also improve the quality of the product.

This was said by the company’s global CEO, Paul Bulcke, when he visited last week,  the inaugural Nestlé NESCAFÉ® PLAN project in Karatina, which targets nine Farmer’s Cooperative Societies (FCS), with 27 wet mills and over 26,000 farming households in different coffee growing zones.

“The demand for coffee in the world market has shown a steady increase in the recent past and Nestlé, with its world famous coffee brands like Nescafé and Nespresso, is one of the buyers of world class coffee. Kenya is known globally as a source of high quality coffee, most of which is from small scale farmers. We want to work closely with key partners, including farmers in Kenya, to provide ready market for their raw materials.” said Bulcke, who was visiting Kenya for the second time.

In 2010, Nestlé announced that it would double the amount of coffee bought directly from farmers to 180,000 tons over the next five years. Currently, the company sources its coffee directly from its markets in South East Asia such as Thailand, China, Indonesia and the Philippines. It is also sources coffee from farmers directly in Brazil, Colombia, Côte d’Ivoire and Mexico. In Africa, Nestlé sources coffee from Kenya, Ethiopia, Tanzania, Rwanda and Burundi.

“Nestlé has always provided great tasting products to its consumers throughout the world which means that our raw materials have to be of top quality and we do not compromise on that. This also puts a huge responsibility on us to help the farmers produce the quality of coffee that we can use in our products,” said Bulcke.

NESCAFÉ® PLAN, was launched in Kenya in March 2012, in partnership with Coffee Management Services (CMS), with an initial investment of Ksh. 35 million, to offer capacity building through training and technical support, to improve productivity, quality (more specialty Grade coffees), and ensure higher incomes for coffee farmers hence improving the living standards of the farmers community.

Globally, Nestlé will be investing about 29 Billion Kshs in The NESCAFÉ® PLAN over the next ten years (2011 – 2020) which builds on the Kshs 17 Billion investment in coffee projects over the last ten years.