Global food giant to invest more in coffee

Coffee beans.

Swiss food giant Nestlé is seeking to give the ailing coffee sector a lease of life through a series of initiatives.

After years of working with thousands of small scale farmers in Central Kenya, the firm has expanded its transformation agenda to cover coffee farmers in Nandi, Kericho and Bungoma Counties.

“The Nescafé Plan is a global initiative to create value across the coffee supply chain,” the firm said in a statement. 

Nestlé also said it intends to spend an additional Sh23 million in the third phase of the programme to offer training and technical support to over 18,000 coffee farmers for the next three years.

Nestle East Africa Managing Director Njeru Ng’entu said the renewal of the programme follows the success of earlier initiatives where it invested over Sh70 million.

“On average, the farmers’ co-operative societies recorded a 12 per cent rise in coffee production while the quantity produced per tree increased from 2.5kg per tree to up to seven kilogrammes between 2011 and 2018,” he said.