History of Nestle: A Swiss Company

Introduction

Nestle is a swiss company founded in 1905 by the merger of Anglo-Swiss Milk Company which was established in 1866 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé. It is headquartered at Vevey, Switzerland. Nestles products include bottled water, baby food, breakfast cereals, confectionary, tea, coffee, ice creams, pet food, frozen food and snacks.
The company has 447 factories in 194 countries. The employee strength is 330,000 people. In 2011 the company was listed No. 1 in Fortune Global 500 as the world’s most profitable organization. It ranks No. 9 in the FT Global 500 2013 with a market capitalization of$233billion. Measured by revenue the company is the largest food company in the world. The major competitors of Nestle are Kraft Foods, PepsiCo, Mars Incorporated and Unilever. For specific product and location the company faces challenges by Danone, Cadbury and Sara Lee.
The company has taken up various initiatives towards CSR that include- World Cocoa Foundation, Sustainable agriculture initiatives, Ecolaboration, expanding business in health care nutrition etc. It has sponsored various programs such as ‘Good Food, Good Life’ in Russia, UK and France. In Russia about 300,000 children approximately from 5,000 schools are annually involved in this program. A total of nearly 1.5 million Russian children have learned about good nutrition and food habits as a result of it. Nestle is also a member of Fair Labor Association.
The company has 10 principles of business operation:
1) Nutrition, Health and Wellness
2) Our people
3) Quality assurance and product safety
4) Consumer communication
5) Safety and health at work
6) Leadership and personal responsibility
7) Supplier and customer relationsh...

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...ing of raw materials is defined in process guidelines which are carefully audited and controlled
5) Consistency and reliability: The company has stringent system to ensure product safety and reliability.
6) Efficiency: The system has high quality standards with minimum waste or mess.
7) Affordability: The company makes products affordable by practicing optimized processing conditions and geographic sourcing to the fine-tuning of the delivery systems.
For instance, in case of bottled water the company performs multiple quality checks hourly to guarantee the quality of water. The product is screened for over 200 contaminants annually even more than the FDA or Italian Health authorities require. The product further goes for visual scrutiny- all bottles are marked with date and batch number. Third party inspection is done National Sanitation Foundation (NSF) annually.