FDBusiness.com

Nestle is creating Nestle Health Science and the Nestle Institute of Health Sciences to pioneer a new industry between food and pharma. These two separate organisations will allow Nestle to develop the innovative area of personalised health science nutrition to prevent and treat health conditions such as diabetes, obesity, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease, which are placing an unsustainable burden on the world’s healthcare systems.

Nestle Health Science, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Nestle, will become operational on 1st January 2011. The new company will be run at arm’s length from Nestle’s main food, beverages and nutrition activities, and incorporate the existing global Nestle HealthCare Nutrition business, which had a turnover of SFr1.6b in 2009. Nestle Health Science will also have access to external scientific and technological know-how through Nestle’s innovation network as well as a number of venture capital funds in which the group has interests.

The Nestle Institute of Health Sciences will be part of Nestle’s global R&D network. Nestle plans to invest hundreds of millions of Swiss francs over the next decade to build a world-class Institute of Health Sciences, which will conduct research in relevant areas of biomedical science to translate this knowledge into nutritional strategies to improve health and longevity. The Institute will be based in the multi-disciplinary scientific environment of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (EPFL) in Lausanne, where Nestle is already involved in two life science initiatives.

“The combination of health economics, changing demographics and advances in health science show that our existing healthcare systems, which focus on treating sick people, are not sustainable and need redesigning. Nestle has the expertise, the science, the resources and the organisation to play a major role in seeking alternative solutions. Personalised health science nutrition is about finding efficient and cost effective ways to prevent and treat acute and chronic diseases in the 21st century,” explains Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, chairman of Nestle.

Paul Bulcke, chief executive of Nestle.

“The creation of Nestle Health Science and the Nestle Institute of Health Sciences is the best way to focus our attention and organise our unique capabilities and competencies to seize this promising business opportunity. The new set-up will give us a pioneering and leading role in this entirely new industry, while at the same time allowing us to keep the necessary focus on Nestle’s extremely important food, beverages and nutrition business,” says Paul Bulcke, chief executive of Nestle.

Nestle first entered healthcare nutrition in 1986. Over the last three years, it has made a number of strategic acquisitions in this area such as Novartis Medical Nutrition and Vitaflo. Nestle HealthCare Nutrition, currently an integral part of Nestle Nutrition, has a long established reputation as a science-based organisation and has also been setting the trend for personalised nutrition and related services in recent years.