AS global credit and equity markets convulse, there's one industry that appears almost immune: packaged food.
Paul Bulcke, global CEO of the Nestle group, sees challenges such as the debate over genetically modified foods, water quality and the little matter of feeding the world's population, but points out that devising and producing reliable and nutritious packaged products is not going to go out of fashion, The Australian reported.
A 54-year-old Belgian engineer who has been with Nestle almost since he graduated, Bulcke was appointed a year ago to run the world's largest food and beverage company, with 265,000 employees, 481 factories and a presence in 87 countries. Bulcke calculates the company has 1.5 per cent of the packaged branded food market.
Nestle brands include Uncle Tobys, Lean Cuisine, Maggi, Peters ice-creams and Allens sweets, as well as its foundation Nestle milk products and Nescafe coffee.
He says founder Henri Nestle "was a pharmacist who saw the baby of a friend die because it couldn't take the nutrients of the mother's milk. In his pharmacy he put milk and cereal together. That was the first product of Nestle".
Nescafe instant coffee arose out of a request by the Brazilian government in 1938 to deal with an oversupply of coffee beans.
"It was beginning to rot on the wharves and they couldn't sell it," he said. Extracting the water from the beans stabilised the product and the rest is history.
Bulcke says Nestle is open to genetically modified products.
