São Paulo – Nestlé plans to double in size by 2012, according to president Ivan Zurita. The company plans to reach the target and to become more aggressive commercially and also paying attention to new market sectors. This information was supplied by Zurita during a seminar yesterday (19th) in São Paulo.
"Investment may not be reduced in times of turbulence," said Zurita, referring to the international financial crisis. To him, the current scenery should be one of investment. Nestlé has doubled revenues in Brazil over the last eight years and has become the second company unit in terms of revenues worldwide.
In recent years, according to Zurita, the company has operated strongly on the lower classes, which resulted in greater distribution of consumption. In the past, 80% of company sales were concentrated in São Paulo and in the south of the country, whereas this participation has now dropped to 67%. According to him, 1 billion reals of company revenues come from low-income families.
"Up to now we had never created a model to supply the lower-income families. We spent a long time studying the daily lives of these people, to understand their needs and offer tailored products. We currently have 6,000 door-to-door salespeople as we know that these consumers have little time to go shopping."
During the seminar, promoted by the Group of Business Leaders (Lide), Zurita defended the market opening and bilateral agreements as a form to supply Brazilian companies. "If we open our frontiers, nobody may compete with us. In all areas, we are highly competitive," said the president at Nestlé.
*Translated by Mark Ament
