Executive Interview: Saint-Francis Tohlang - Corporate Communications & Public Affairs Director, East & Southern Africa Region, Nestle

Please introduce yourself and Nestlé’s business in the region

I am very privileged to be part of executive Leadership in this region, which is fairly new and was established in 2018. The region is a consolidation of the former Equatorial Africa Region, which was headquartered out of Nairobi, Kenya and the Southern Africa Region, which was based out of Johannesburg, South Africa. The two regions were consolidated to form the East and Southern Africa Region consisting of 23 countries, which are organized in 6 clusters, the reason being to allow better focus in each cluster. Each cluster has an office where it is run and operated from; for cluster one we have Addis Ababa, Ethiopia; cluster 2 is based in Nairobi, Kenya; cluster 3 in Port-Louis, Mauritius; cluster 4 in Harare, Zimbabwe; cluster 5 in Maputo, Mozambique and cluster 6 Johannesburg - which also serves as the regional head office.

In terms of our business, we have a very balanced product portfolio. We play in different categories from infant formula food, coffee and beverages, plus the Nestle Health Science business - an interesting unit that focuses on nutritional science, and many others. We have very powerful and loved brands across the continent, which is really the heart of our business, providing nutritional and much-loved products to people in Eastern and Southern Africa.

Sustainability has become a key focus area for businesses and governments across the World. As the world’s leading food manufacturing company, what do you think your role and responsibility lies in leading the sustainability agenda?

When we think about our role and responsibility as the biggest food and beverage Company, we need not look very far. Our purpose statement is the true North of everything we do; it is our reference point.

The statement reads; “Unlocking the power of food to enhance the quality of life for everyone today and for generations to come.”

When you hear that, the link to sustainability might not be apparent. But, in believing in the power of food to enhance quality of life and particularly that belief fueling us to use the scale that we enjoy and to put resources behind various initiatives and the expertise to contribute towards a healthier future, not only for the people through our products but also for the planet where we source resources from. It is our additional responsibility to protect those resources. This is very much engrained on the business philosophy from Nestle’s perspective, which is creating shared value, a concept that has become very popular over the last decade.

The company’s previous CEOs and Chairmen have been the pioneers of embedding this type of thinking in our organization. We have learnt that we cannot be successful as an organization if we are not creating value that is to be shared, not only by our shareholders but also by the community - particularly one that we are operating in, while at the same time protecting our environment. From that perspective it is evident that the issue of sustainability is anchored in our purpose statement and that is what keeps on reminding us of our role towards the environment.

What is your company’s strategy to deliver on sustainability?

Some of the initiatives that we have come up with include the RE Sustainability Initiative that we launched in 2020, which looks at three key pillars: Rethink, Reduce and Repurpose, which will help us in modeling and achieving our goals towards sustainability.

In this initiative, we are to Rethink our own business model, our relationship with the environment and our processes, to embed sustainability measures; Reduce our impact on the environment, which highlights our goal of going towards Zero impact by 2030 and Repurpose - we look at how we can reuse waste in the system. Theses 3 pillars help us organize our sustainability measures in a much clearer way.

We have also been working on our packaging - we are moving away from plastic packaging now with the global surge of plastics. Infact our very own brand Smarties is the first global confectionery brand to switch to 100% recyclable paper packaging.

Other parts of our sustainability focus include reducing water withdrawals, increasing renewable energy by 2025 - we will completely move all our operations to renewable electricity from solar power. Right now we have achieved our goal of zero waste to land in our operations and it is important that we maintain that.

OTHER PARTS OF OUR SUSTAINABILITY FOCUS INCLUDE REDUCING WATER WITHDRAWALS, INCREASING RENEWABLE ENERGY BY 2025 - WE WILL COMPLETELY MOVE ALL OUR OPERATIONS TO RENEWABLE ELECTRICITY FROM SOLAR POWER. RIGHT NOW WE HAVE ACHIEVED OUR GOAL OF ZERO WASTE TO LAND IN OUR OPERATIONS

What are some of your initiatives towards sourcing raw materials locally and developing local agriculture value chains?

We have a global program called Farmer Connect where we have worked with half a million farmers and we are continuing working with them. This is usually embedded in what we called The Responsible Sourcing Standards, which is a Nestle standard that outlines the necessary interventions that we need to have in the sourcing of raw materials. We believe that working with farmers is very important.

In our region we work with 370 farmers, a majority being dairy farmers, but in Kenya we also work with coffee farmers. The focus of this intervention is not only educating farmers but also helping them increase crop yield and making sure that the quality of their yield is better, because that guarantees that we are also sourcing high quality materials. It is basically a mutually beneficial relationship.

We recently announced the Pilot of the first carbon neutral Dairy Farm in Africa, which is located in South Africa - a very exciting project. What we are trying to do is displace the greenhouse emissions that a normal dairy farm would emit through things like regenerative agriculture, focusing on the soil, focusing on manure, reducing methane emissions from the cows etc. This is a very complex kind of science but by 2023 we will have achieved this goal.

What unique challenges do you face in Africa that limit the achievement of your sustainability goals?

The biggest hurdle in Africa has been the lack of technical know-how. We generate very fantastic ideas and make very ambitious plans but now the challenge we encounter in implementing them is mainly the know-how and skills part.

For example, we look at how we can use biomimicry in our packaging but then again you find that maybe it is only one supplier who can do it in this part of the World and the cost is exorbitant. Finding the right partners is also a big challenge we encounter in our operations here.

Do you run into regulatory hurdles?

That has not been a big issue, the thing is the regulatory framework is different in the 23 countries that we operate in. Some are very different, some are not harmonized in terms of understanding, but that has not been a big impediment.

How does Nestle collaborate with other companies to enhance its innovations agenda?

One key approach we have decided to take as an organization is recognizing that we cannot solve it all on our own. We definitely do have access to the smartest brains in the industry and the best research networks in the world, which means that we have a lot that we can leverage within Nestle’ but we certainly have areas that we are not so strong at.

We have learnt to admit that and secondly go out there and look for people that we can work with to enable us to achieve our goals. We scan for partnerships in different ways: sometimes we get direct proposals from companies who think they could add value to something we are doing, and we welcome that. Other times, we solicit directly with partners we think could add value and also through open innovations through the Nestlé Hatcher.

Tell us more about the Nestlé Hatcher

In March 2021, we launched an open Innovations platform known as the Nestlé Hatcher. We realized that we have to build partnership ecosystem in certain streams of the business. Such ecosystems are complimentary and speak to areas that we are not so strong in.

On the platform, we invite people and startups with ideas to respond to various challenges that we have posted there, and we have seen incredible uptake and submissions. We look at it as a way of inviting collaborations with other stakeholders in the value chain.

How Did Covid-19 affect your business and how did you respond to these challenges

Covid 19 has surely affected many businesses in different ways. Our Covid-19 response was based on 3 pillars that is - our people, our business and our community.

We offered Covid-19 relief to communities just to ensure that they are able to survive the pandemic and made sure that we safeguarded the health of our people. In terms of the businesses that we work with such as our suppliers, distributors and partners we made sure they were afloat by offering cash flow solutions by re-looking at our payment terms. Our CEO for the region had this interesting analogy that we are as strong as our weakest link and that’s why we tried as best as we could to help the small enterprises that we work with stay afloat.

A peek into the future: Tells us about your strategy concerning new product innovation. Are plant-based foods in the horizon?

The implications of Covid-19 have contributed massively to the change in consumption patterns of consumers.

The first area we are focusing on is consumer insight, which is the foundation of most of the decisions that we make before we move on to addressing the real issues in this region where there is a triple burden of disease, malnutrition and micronutrient deficiency.

We are determined on addressing these key issues by availing affordable nutritious foods even before we dive into new product categories such as plant-based foods. It doesn’t mean that we are not looking into plant-based we definitely are on board and in fact, we just launched a new coffee latte series that is completely plant-based in South Africa, but we feel like we should first respond to the real needs in our region.

Going into the future, we are excited for this region - it is a region full of opportunities. We have been present for over 100 years and ambitious to not only remain present but also have a positive impact on the people through our products, on the communities that we operate around and on the planet in general through our sustainability initiatives.