Henri Nestlé, Himself an Immigrant from Germany, Was Instrumental in Turning His Company Towards International Expansion from the Very Outset
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Henri Nestlé, himself an immigrant from Germany, was instrumental in turning his company towards international expansion from the very outset. We Henri Nestlé owe much more than just our name, our logo and our first infant formula to our 1814 –1890 founder. Henri Nestlé embodied many of Bicentenary the key attitudes and values that are still part and parcel of our corporate culture to this very day: pragmatism, flexibility, the willingness to learn, impartiality and respect for other people and cultures. Henri Nestlé Albert Pfiffner From Pharmacist’s Assistant to Founder of the World’s Leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company This is an abridged translation of the German original – Henri Nestlé (1814–1890). Vom Frankfurter Apothekergehilfen zum Schweizer Pionierunternehmer – by Albert Pfiffner, published by Chronos-Verlag, Zurich 1993. 330 pp, ISBN 3-905311-27-5. This is an enhanced new edition on the occasion of the 200th birthday of Henri Nestlé. The first edition was published in 1995 with the title: Henri Nestlé. From Pharmacist’s Assistant to Founder of the World’s Largest Food Company. Henri Nestlé 1814 –1890 From Pharmacist’s Assistant to Founder of the World’s Leading Nutrition, Health and Wellness Company “My infant cereal has a tremendous future because there is no food to compare with it.” Henri Nestlé 1868 Foreword 8 Nutrition – it’s in Nestlé’s DNA 11 The Frankfurt Period 19 1814–1834/39 Henri Nestlé – Pioneering Entrepreneur 29 1839–1861 The Invention of Infant Cereal 45 1861–1867 The Production and Marketing of Infant Cereal – Development of the Nestlé Company 69 1868–1875 Sale of the Company and Henri Nestlé’s Final Years 127 1875–1890 Frankfurt – Vevey 2014 145 8 Foreword In 1867, Henri Nestlé, a 53 year-old entrepreneur from Frankfurt am Main, brought an infant formula (Nestlé’s Milk Food) to market in the small Swiss town of Vevey. His small business thrived, particularly after 1905 when it merged with the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co., founded by the Page brothers in 1866 in Cham (Switzerland) and became a large, successful company that still proudly bears the name of its founder. This book is an abridged version of Albert Pfiffner’s comprehensive biography of Henri Nestlé. It describes the career of an entrepreneur, continually observing consumer and society’s needs to find new opportunities to earn his living. Henri Nestlé tried his hand at developing and manufacturing various products including mineral water, liqueurs, vinegar, fertilisers, liquefied gas and Portland cement. Not all of his projects were successful – quite the contrary – but he never gave up. Instead, he continued relentlessly to gain experience and knowledge whilst adapting to the ever-changing environment. The breakthrough came with his Milk Food. Henri Nestlé recognised a need in society and applied the latest scientific findings to develop a suitable product to combat the raging infant mortality prevalent at the time. The product was marketed with a brand name that has since become recognisable in almost every country of the world. Today, 200 years after the birth of its founder, Nestlé’s activities bear testament to a remarkable continuity. Although the company has increased the number of its products and markets several times over, its passion for quality and the use of the latest scientific research to improve the nutritional value of its products remain unchanged. Much like Henri Nestlé, confronted with the special nutritional needs of babies, we aim to improve the quality of life of our consumers at all stages of their existence, whatever their situation and offer them healthier and tastier food and beverage choices. 9 “Henri Nestlé embodied many of the key attitudes and values that are still part and parcel of our corporate culture to this very day.” Henri Nestlé, himself an immigrant from Germany, was instrumental in turning his company towards international expansion from the very outset. We owe much more than just our name, our logo and our first infant formula to our founder. Henri Nestlé embodied many of the key attitudes and values that are still part and parcel of our corporate culture to this very day: pragmatism, flexibility, the willingness to learn, impartiality and respect for other people and cultures. 150 years ago, Henri Nestlé laid the foundations that have enabled us to become the world leader in nutrition, health and wellness. To explain this development further, we have added a section to this new edition that briefly summarises our efforts in this area. Peter Brabeck-Letmathe Paul Bulcke Chairman of the Board of Directors Chief Executive Officer 10 11 Nutrition – it’s in Nestlé’s DNA From Nestlé’s infant formula to the world leader in Nutrition, Health and Wellness The concept of “nutrition”, in the sense of a healthy, balanced and enjoyable relationship with food, together with the logically connected keywords of “health” and “wellness”, defines Nestlé’s basic strategic orientation and can be traced back to the company’s very beginnings. In 1867, Henri Nestlé worked together with doctors and scientists to develop the first complete baby food produced on a large scale, using the latest scientific findings. He created a high-quality product that responded to the nutritional needs of young children and the demands of their mothers, at the advent of industrialisation and urbanisation. However, Henri Nestlé did not rest on his laurels but continued to develop this product on a constant basis. His successors also stayed true to his legacy of always keeping up-to-date with the latest research in order to offer consumers healthy, tasty products with a high nutritional value. The company continued to apply this strategy when it started moving beyond the traditional area of milk-based products into more and more food categories, namely chocolate, where Nestlé refined Daniel Peter’s pioneering method of combining cocoa and milk; the ground- breaking discovery of instant coffee; and culinary products, where Nestlé inherited the ideas of another food pioneer from the late 19th century, Julius Maggi, and further developed them in its own research. 12 HENRI NESTLÉ 1814–1890 Nestlé and its employees internalised the objective of making a contribution to healthy nutrition right from the start of the company’s history. This aim did not become publicly visible until 1980, however, when former Chairman and CEO Helmut Maucher began focusing more intensively on the legacy of the company’s founder as a pioneer of nutritional research, and made a concerted effort to step up Nestlé’s research activities. This was confirmed in 1997, when the first task of his successor as CEO, Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, was to announce the establishment of the Nutrition Strategic Business Division (NSBD). Alongside the traditional infant nutrition business, this comprised new types of food that were also produced on the basis of scientific findings resulting from Nestlé’s own research, such as probiotics and “Branded Active Benefits” (BABs), supplements with a health-promoting effect that were added to a growing number of existing products. At the start of the new millennium, Peter Brabeck took another decisive step in announcing his intention to transform Nestlé from a traditional manufacturer of food products into a research-driven Food, Nutrition and Wellness company. To realise the third part of this “triad”, he also created a Corporate Wellness Unit. After taking over as Chairman of the Board in 2005, Peter Brabeck replaced the notion of “food” with “health” thus enabling Nestlé to now define itself as a Nutrition, Health and Wellness (NHW) company. This new triad has proved decisive for the entire corporate strategy, including subsequent acquisitions and divestments. Indeed, Nestlé divested several business areas which it deemed could not provide any added value through any further development. It also made selective acquisitions that significantly strengthened the Nutrition area, such as American baby food manufacturer Gerber in 2006, the Novartis Medical Nutrition business in 2007 and Wyeth Nutrition, the infant formula division of the US pharmaceutical company Pfizer, in 2012. As a result of these acquisitions, Nestlé Nutrition, which emerged from the NSBD and had been operating independently since 2006, doubled its sales. The establishment of the Nestlé Nutrition Institute a year earlier confirmed Nestlé’s ambition to play a leading role in this sector from a scientific point of view and constitutes the starting point for new developments. The appointment of Paul Bulcke as the new CEO in 2008 was a further driving force, and 1 January 2011 saw the start of an additional key phase in Nestlé’s development into a Nutrition, Health and Wellness company: the area of medical nutrition, which Nestlé had entered in the 1990s through its joint venture with Baxter and expanded through the integration of Novartis Medical Nutrition, became an autonomous business unit. Named Nestlé Health Science S.A. (NHSc), it specialises in preventative and personalised nutrition for people with particular health needs. On the same day, Nestlé NUTRITION – IT’S IN NESTLÉ’S DNA 13 also opened the Nestlé Institute of Health Sciences (NIHS) on the campus of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). This took the cooperation between Nestlé and the EPFL, which had started a few years previously with the Brain Food project, to a new level. Bringing together more than 100 researchers from all over the world, the institute is researching the diverse forms of interaction between nutrition, health and genomics, and thereby trying to find the causes of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, diabetes, cancer and gastrointestinal diseases through their early detection and treatment. The NIHS also carries out research into new ways of combating obesity and its antonym, malnutrition, and looks into the special nutritional needs of an ageing population in industrialised countries.