• GROWTH: Food multinational Nestlé is expanding its investment in a new coffee processing plant in the Mexican state of Veracruz from an original sum of USD $154 million to a total of USD $200,000 which is expected to process 20,000 tons of locally sourced coffee per year.
• STRATEGIC: Already a buyer of coffee from local producers in the Gulf state of Veracruz (pop. 8.1 million), the new operation by the Swiss multinational will work alongside another large coffee plant in Mexico near the city of Toluca with a capacity to process 68,000 per year.
• EQUIPMENT: “What we are doing is adding some additional equipment to the original project and that is why the investment sum is growing”, Fausto Cota, CEO for Nestlé’s Mexican operations during a business summit in the Mexican Caribbean resort of Cancún.
• OPPOSITION: Earlier in 2019, a group of local coffee producers protested in the Veracruz state capital city of Xalapa saying that the Nestlé plant in the Veracruz municipality will promote the cultivation of robusta coffee in detriment of local producers of the arabica variety.
