Nestlé setting up more direct coffee buying stations in Phl

MANILA, Philippines - Nestlé Philippines Inc. is planning to increase its direct coffee buying stations in the country in line with its long-term goal of getting the bulk of its coffee requirements locally.

In an interview, Nestlé Philippines chairman and chief executive officer John Miller said the firm intends to bring the total number of its coffee buying stations to 12 within the year from nine.

“First and foremost, we want to source the lion’s share of our coffee locally,” he said.

At present, the firm gets around 30 to 35 percent of its coffee requirements locally, while the rest is imported.

“But our vision is by 2020, we will be able to source at least 70 percent of our coffee requirements from local farmers and the great thing about coffee which is produced in the Philippines is that in fact, we can extract more coffee from the Filipino coffee bean than we can say from that from Vietnam. There is a very clear incentive for us to draw as much coffee as we can from the local farmer,” Miller said.

The coffee buying stations are set up in areas with communities that can produce 350 to 400 metric tons of coffee per year.

The firm’s coffee buying stations are located in the following areas: Silang in Cavite, Lipa City in Batangas, Tuguegarao City in Cagayan Valley, Dumaguete City in Negros Oriental, Tagbina in Surigao del Sur, Cagayan de Oro City in Misamis Oriental, Tagum City in Davao del Norte, General Santos City in South Cotabato, and Iloilo City in Iloilo.

Nestlé Philippines sells seedlings to coffee growers to encourage farmers to produce the crop and sell to the firm.

Farmers that sell the crop to the firm are paid on the same day of delivery to the buying stations.

Miller said that while Nestlé Philippines has identified coffee as its key priority for increasing local sourcing, in the future, the firm would also like to get other commodities used for their production from Filipino farmers.

“I think further down the road, we can certainly look at other commodities like cacao and cassava…And looking further ahead, milk which is a very very important component of several of our products,” he said.