Garoto, one of Nestlé’s chocolate brands in Brazil. Credit: @garoto / Facebook

Swiss multinational Nestlé has announced plans to earmark 6bn reais ($1.2bn) for food and drink production in Brazil.

A series of investments will be made between 2023 and 2025.

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These will help to foster “business growth, portfolio transformation and operational efficiency” in its chocolate, coffee, pet food and nutrition categories in the country. Nestlé’s nutrition business takes in products including infant formula and supplements.

The spending will also go towards increasing production capacity, building new processing equipment, and increasing “innovation in products and packaging”, a Nestlé spokesperson said when asked by Just Food for further details on the investment.

Nestlé declined to reveal how much money it will allocate to each business area.

The company has also not made clear how many new jobs it intends to create with the funds.

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However, it did confirm to Just Food that a $2.7bn reais investment in its Brazilian chocolate and biscuit lines, announced in August, is part of the larger $6bn reais sum.

This funding on its own was said to be triple the amount invested in the last four years in the country.

Nestlé’s facilities in Caçapava and Marília in São Paulo, plus Vila Velha in Espírito Santo, were expected to see the majority of the $2.7bn reais.

While the Caçapava site is home to the production of the KitKat brand, the Marília plant is used to make biscuits. Vila Velha is where Garoto chocolates are made.

Nestlé made further moves in Brazil this year with the acquisition of a majority stake in the “high-end” national chocolate group Grupo CRM.

Nestlé announced a similar major capex boost in the country in February 2022, when it said it planned to spend over 1.8bn reais that year in areas such as production, technology and distribution.

According to Nestlé’s 2022 annual report, the company has 12 factories in Brazil, spanning milk and ice cream; drinks; pet food; confectionery; prepared dishes and cooking aids; and its nutrition and Health Science business.

The food and drink conglomerate reported “strong double-digit growth” in its sales in Brazil in the first nine months of 2023, with confectionery and infant cereals witnessing “continued momentum”.

Organic growth for the Latin America region was up 10%, while reported sales increased by 5.7% year-on-year to SFr9.1bn ($10.4bn).