Coca-Cola FEMSA country

MANILA, Philippines - When in Mexico, you can visit the city of Monterrey, where Coca-Cola FEMSA started out as a brewery 124 years ago.

FEMSA stands for Fomento Economico Mexicano, SAB de CV. Today, as anchor bottler of Coca-Cola, owner of Latin America’s largest convenience store chain called OXXO, and second largest investor in Heineken beer, FEMSA is also promoting “social sustainability” and healthy lifestyles.

Their basic mission, says Coca-Cola FEMSA’s chief finance officer Javier Astaburruaga, is “to create economic value simultaneously with social value.”

The company has a “social sustainability manager,” Anik Vares, who explains that their goal is to contribute to the transformation of communities and promote healthy lifestyles with sustainable sourcing.

Last year the company joined the World Economic Forum’s Healthy Lifestyles Initiative, with its “Coordinates for Life” going soon to the Philippines.

The project involves holding workshops on cognitive, emotional and social “life skills” for children from low-income households. Vares said they hope that by June they can pilot the project in Quezon City, in cooperation with education officials and a non-government organization. Life skills help children cope with issues such as bullying and peer pressure and encourage a “culture of lawfulness,” according to Vares.

“Good health is related to choices,” she says.

To promote good health, the company has partnered with the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education in setting up a Biotechnology and Food School.

Scientists in the school’s CIDPRO, or Research Center for Protein Development, have developed “Provita.” This is a protein sourced from vegetables, which can be used as partial or complete substitute for animal proteins.

The more affordable protein can improve nutrition in poor countries where millions of people suffer from protein deficiency. Provita can be added to breakfast cereals, bread and tortillas and meat substitutes.

CIDPRO director Sergio Othon Serna Saldivar said they are also working on bacteria to purify water, broccoli sprouts to reduce cholesterol, and the Mexican cactus nopal, widely used as a vegetable, for sugar management.

The research center is expanding its reach way beyond food nutrition content. Biotechnology school director Manuel Zertuche Guerra said there is ongoing research on bacteria for treating cancer. They are also working on stem cells taken from blood or the back of humans – not for cosmetic purposes, but to inject into the brain for treating amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or Lou Gehrig’s Disease.

When the topic becomes too heavy for you, you can sit back and enjoy the scenery in Monterrey, starting with its landmark, Cerro de la Silla or Saddle Hill.

You can do this while enjoying a bottle of Coke – classic, light or zero – or the company’s numerous juices, Blak coffee and bottled water, marketed in Mexico as Ciel.

Last year Coca-Cola FEMSA took over Coke operations in the Philippines. Company officials have big plans for expansion – not just in the country but in the Asia-Pacific, with Manila as the staging point.

The two countries’ shared history and culture, according to Coca-Cola FEMSA CEO John Santa Maria, was a decisive factor in Coca-Cola’s selection of Manila as its entry point to the Asia-Pacific.

“There’s nothing more culturally attuned to Mexico and Latin America than the Philippines,” Santa Maria told a group of Philippine journalists in Mexico City. “We’re very new to the Philippines and we’re very, very excited to be there… we haven’t even begun to scratch the surface.”

The company is pumping back into its Philippine operations the $200 million it earned in the country in 2013 as it moves to modernize and expand, with about 2,000 new jobs expected to be created this year mostly in the provinces.

“Our story does not end in the Philippines,” Santa Maria said. “We begin it there.”