Packaging is Nestle's universal language

Food & Drug Packaging, July, 2005 by Pan Demetrakakes

The world's largest food company makes an amazing variety of products, including candy, pet food, pasta, coffee, baby food, milk, ice cream and more. (It also has a strong presence in bottled water and other beverages.) The Swiss-based company operates in 86 countries around the world.

Nestle's 2004 sales amounted to $76.7 billion, of which $51.4 billion was food. Sales have been rising steadily since 2001's figure of $50.6 billion. Nestle's largest single segment is dairy products, where sales reached $18.2 billion in 2004, a 2.4% increase over 2003.

America was a particular success story for Nestle in 2004, where profits rose 7.7%. Ice cream was a special bright spot. Nestle has a majority stake in Dreyer's Grand Ice Cream, acquired through a merger that was completed last December. Dreyer's came out last year with "Slow Churned" low-fat ice cream, made with a process that "stretches" butterfat molecules to give low-fat ice cream the taste of full-fat. (Dreyer's and its Edy's subsidiary constitute the second bestselling brand of U.S. ice cream.)

Chocolate and confectionery also did well for Nestle in 2004, with sales of $7.9 billion. Sales in this segment were especially good in the United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil and Japan. Pet care also sold well, weighing in at $7.6 billion. A company report attributed that success, especially in North America, to "a high level of innovation focusing on health and wellness which consumers view as important for their pets as for themselves."

The variety of products Nestle manufactures, and the company's global distribution, mean that it uses just about every kind of packaging you can think of: flexible film, glass and plastic bottles, other rigid containers, paperboard, tubes and more. The company has traditionally been in the forefront Of packaging innovation; it was the first to use such novelties as the Tetra Pak retortable carton (used for Italian dog food) and the self-heating coffee can.

Some of Nestle's more recent new packages include:

* Retorting unusual materials was behind a Nestle innovation in France that came out this year: a multiwall plastic cup, with an oxygen barrier layer, for Coeur de Saveur baby food--a high-end version of its glass jars.

* Reasoning that pets like variety as much as people, Nestle rolled out a 12-can variety pack of Purina Friskies canned cat food. The paperboard carton holds the cans in a 3 x 4 configuration, with a "wall" between the top and bottom six. This package won an award this year from the Paperboard Packaging Council.

* Nestle Canada introduced a Holiday Twist package last Christmas for Smarties candy. The spiral-wound paperboard canisters include three moveable rings that let kids rearrange the label graphics into many different combinations.