FDBusiness.com

To consolidate its operations in the Russian and Eurasia region, Nestle has opened two premium chocolate production lines. Creating 149 new jobs, the two production lines, which were transferred from the Tuchkovo factory in the Ruzsky district, Moscow, to the Confectionery Union Rossiya facility in Samara region, will produce Comilfo, the premium chocolate brand.

The transfer of the Comilfo production lines allows Nestle to concentrate its chocolate manufacturing facilities in Russia and strengthen the Confectionery Union Rossiya factory as a key competence centre for confectionery products in Europe.

The Swiss food group also recently announced investment of SFr240m (Eur180m) to expand the Nestle Kuban factory in Timashevsk in order to replace the current packaging process with a full-cycle production of Nescafe Gold coffee. The facility, due to start production in the third quarter of 2011, will benefit from Nestle’s state-of-the-art freeze-dry technology which already exists in many of its other factories around the world.

“The Russian soluble coffee market is the largest in the world and has major potential. That is why we are making a strategic investment to increase our capacities in Russia using our most advanced company technologies and our wide experience in producing premium soluble coffee since inventing it in 1938,” says Laurent Freixe, executive vice president and zone director for Europe at Nestle.

Nestle operates 13 production facilities in Russia with 10 sales offices and employs around 10,000 employees.