Nestlé Launches $500-Million Global Plan For Sustainable Coffee
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Sustainability Nestle
Nestlé, the world’s biggest buyer of coffee, will invest CHF (Swiss Francs) 500 million ($512-million Cdn.) in a wide-ranging plan to address responsible farming, sourcing and consumption across its coffee supply chain.
Nestlé, which purchases around 780,000 tonnes of green coffee a year or 10 per cent of the world’s supply notes that the the Nescafé Plan is a global initiative and builds on the CHF 200 million ($205-million Cdn.) the company has already invested in the coffee industry over the past 10 years.
The Rainforest Alliance, an international non-governmental organization, will support Nestlé together with other partners of the Sustainable Agriculture Network (SAN) and the coffee association 4C, in meeting the Nescafé Plan objectives related to farming.
Tensie Whelan, president of the Rainforest Alliance, welcomes the initiative and said the Rainforest Alliance looked forward to working with Nestlé to implement the Nescafé Plan. “The Nescafé Plan is about looking ahead, to the future of coffee farming. We see this collaboration as an exciting opportunity to bring sustainability tools to thousands of farmers, including many who have not had the benefit of training and technical assistance.”
Nestlé chief executive officer Paul Bulcke who announced the plan in Mexico City says: “We are proud that Nescafé, the world’s leading coffee brand, gives its name to this global initiative which creates value across the supply chain, from farmers to consumers, to us. Creating Shared Value is an integral part of our business strategy. For a company to be successful in the long term, it needs to create value at the same time for its shareholders and the communities in which it operates.”
The Nescafé Plan comes on top of Nestlé’s Cocoa Plan, launched in October 2009, a CHF 110 million (~$113-million Cdn.) investment to improve the sustainability of the cocoa industry which includes the distribution of 38 million high-yield disease resistant cocoa plantlets over the next 10 years.
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