Así de tranquilas, contentas  y relajadas pedaleamos por la Vía Verde del Pas en el último tramo del PR S-57 La huella del ferrocarril, después de habernos comido un delicioso Kit-Kat, que como se puede observar no nos pesó a la hora del regreso…

¿Será que tal vez el Kit-Kat pesa menos en el estómago que en la mochila…? ¿ó simplemente será que teníamos hambre y la satisfacción consiguiente nos hizo pedalear con más alegría?

En fin, la cuestión es que íbamos encantadas de la vida… Y todo por un pequeño Kit-Kat…

> Ecologistas en Acción se hace eco y apoya la declaración de la Vía Campesina, aterrada de la arrogancia del sector privado y, especialmente, de Nestlé, quienes han creado la crisis alimentaria.

Los Campesinos y Campesinas ofrecen soluciones
La Via Campesina esta aterrada de la arrogancia del sector privado y especialmente de Nestlé, al pretender ofrecer soluciones a la actual crisis alimentaria considerando que son las mismas transnacionales quienes han continuado a contribuir activamente a la creación de esta crisis.

Los comentarios del presidente de Nestlé durante la Conferencia del sector privado y de la FAO en Milan el pasado 12 de noviembre nos resultan particularmente chocantes dadas las conocidas campañas de Nestlé para fomentar la formula del consumo de leche para bebes en detrimento de la lactancia materna en los paises en desarrollo.

Muchas transnacionales han aumentado sus beneficios durante la crisis alimentaria y han jugado un rol principal al incrementar el hambre en el mundo mediante la toma de control sobre el sistema alimentario y los recursos productivos como la tierra y el agua, excluyendo a campesinos y campesinas de la misma producción alimentaria.

Estos actores privados han presionado por cambiar los modelos agricolas de producción, forzando a modos productivos intensivos e introduciendo tecnologias y politicas como los agrocombustibles, los transgénicos y la liberalización del comercio con el único interes de incrementar sus beneficios. Las deslumbrantes fallas de estas estrategias corporativas de las transnacionales frente al sistema alimentario son evidentes dadas las estadisticas que demuestran el constante aumento en las cifras de las personas que sufren de hambre en el mundo.

Sobre el tema de transgenicos, Javier Sánchez, representante del sindicato campesino COAG (miembro de la Vía Campesina), declaró: “Existe un consenso global entre campesinos y consumidores sobre las tecnologias de OGMs que permiten a las multinacionales tomar el control sobre las semillas negando a los agricultores la posibilidad de guardar sus propias semillas. Campesinos y campesinas pierden el derecho a producir alimentos libres de modificaciones geneticas mientras que los consumidores pierden el derecho de alimentarse al mismo tiempo con productos sin transgenicos. Este es un claro ejemplo de como la privatizacion de los recursos naturales va en contra de los intereses comunes. Los consumidores en Europa, con razón, estan rechazando este tipo de tecnologias;”

Henry Saragih, coordinador general de La Vía Campesina observa que en su pais natal, Indonesia, Nestlé ha contribuido directamente al empobrecimiento del campesinado y al fomento de la malnutricion particularmente entre los bebes, a traves del control de la produccion y del sistema de precios dentro del sector lechero.

Durante el Foro ‘Soberania Alimentaria Ya’, paralelo a la Cumbre Mundial sobre Seguridad Alimentaria en Roma, las Organizaciones de la Sociedad Civil estan proponiendo las soluciones reales de la soberania alimentaria.

Vía | ecologistasenaccion.org

Nestlé resucita Nescao, ahora Nescau 2.0, y lanza nueva variedad de Milo

Nestlé lanzó al mercado peruano Nescau 2.0, versión brasilera del recordado Nescao, fortificante de chocolate en polvo desaparecido durante la primera mitad de los noventa. El producto está disponible por un tiempo limitado, sólo en autoservicios y cuenta con una presentación única en lata.

Por otro lado, Nestlé también sacó a la venta Milo Free, versión de Milo con 50% menos calorías. Este producto fue lanzado anteriormente en Colombia y se caracteriza por su envase con curvas.

A propósito del lanzamiento de Nescau 2.0, un spot del recordado Nescao de 1989:

Cual fue nuestra sorpresa al percibir al entrar en el pueblo de La Pinilla realizando el PR S-57 La huella del ferrocarril un suculento olor a chocolate…

Enseguida encontramos la razón de tal alta estimulación de nuestras papilas gustativas a través del olfato:

Un olor inspirador en La Pinilla

Y claro ya con unos cuantos kilómetros en las piernas el HAMBRE  hacía de las suyas… Y eso nos recordó que teníamos en la mochila:

Inspiración Kit-Kat

… que no tardó ni un segundo en desaparecer… Igual que el olor que dejamos de percibir tras pasar unos minutos cerca de la fuente olorosa

La cinquième édition du Salon Passion Chocolat & Cie m’a permis de découvrir de nombreux exposants intéressants. J’ai notamment goûté à de la couverture chocolat du fabriquant Cacao Barry, qui proposait des dégustations de ses produits Alto et Sol du Perou ou encore Oropucce de Trinidad. Outre pour son chocolat, Cacao Barry est connu pour son centre multidisciplinaire consacré au chocolat : la Chocolate Academy située à Saint-Hyacinthe.

En continuant mon parcours dégustation, j’ai dégusté les produits suivants :

Le chocolat éclat de caramel de Nestlé avec du fromage fumé

L’expérience n’était pas très suprenante, puisque la dégustation chocolat et fromage est assez courante. J’aurai préféré goûter un chocolat moins sucré pour cette dégustation. Chose agréable, les morceaux de caramel dans le chocolat se mélangaient très bien au fromage gouda.

La fontaine de chocolat et pomme

Sous forme de shooter, les exposants de Trucs et truffes Chocolaterie (une entreprise qui se spécialise dans les fêtes de chocolat) servaient du chocolat fondu directement issu de la fontaine à chocolat. Le chocolat fondu recouvrait de moitié les quartiers de pommes. Bien que ce soit surtout les enfants qui se sont amusés avec ce shooter, j’ai beaucoup aimé ce chocolat que je juge de bonne qualité.

Amandes au gingembre de Maribel Blanco

Maribel Blanco commercialise des amandes rôties et assaisonnées qu’elle fait elle-même. Elle propose des amandes au citron, au tamari, au chocolat, au citron et amandes et mes préférées, celles au gingembre. Quand on commence à en manger, on ne s’arrête plus. Les amandes de Maribel Blanco sont vraiment excellentes et je les conseille à tous le monde !

Au final, à part un chocolat au fromage Rioppelle que je n’ai pas du tout aimé (mais il en faut pour tous les goûts), j’ai apprécié mes expériences gustatives au Salon Passion Chocolat & Cie. L’année prochaine, c’est sûr, j’y retrourne.

]]> http://the818now.com/2009/11/24/nestle-expects-to-fall-short-on-canned-pumpkin-supply/ Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:26:44 +0000 Zain Shauk http://the818now.com/2009/11/24/nestle-expects-to-fall-short-on-canned-pumpkin-supply/

Credit: Creative Commons

Glendale-based Nestle USA expects to run out of its popular Libby’s canned pumpkin product ahead of Thanksgiving because of flooding that devastated farms in Morton, Illinois, the “pumpkin capital of the world,” the company said in a statement.

Nestle, which dominates sales for the canned goods, controlling about 85% of the market by most estimates, will fall short of meeting its delivery goals in time for meeting Thanksgiving demand for the key ingredient used in pumpkin pies, the company said.

Heavy rains during the 13-week harvest were to blame for the shortage, the company said.

“If only we could have changed the weather,” Paul Bakus, vice president and general manager of Nestle baking, said in a statement.

Although Nestle expanded its farms in 2008, “this year, heavy rains saturated the pumpkin fields, making it nearly impossible for tractors and other equipment to operate,” the company said.

From the Nestle statement:

As a result of the weather and the company’s commitment to picking and packing only quality fruit, the 2009 inventory of canned pumpkin will be smaller than planned. Nestle is continuing to ship the last of the already canned inventory. When it is gone, there will be no more pumpkin available until the 2010 harvest.  This is why the company believes a shortage of Libby’s pumpkin is likely.

by Stephanie Hanson

I have a confession to make, a confession that I am almost ashamed to make. I am an anglophile. I always think people obsessed with other countries are rather silly, after all, you should love the one you’re in unless it’s very horrible. Which our country is of course not. But we are always drawn to the exotic. For me, it’s the chocolate. English chocolate is just…so much better on a basic level. And they really have the best candy bars. Especially Cadbury. You can imagine how much I wanted to visit Willy Wonka as a child, and how much I envied Roald Dahl when I found out that he had a childhood job as a chocolate taster for Cadbury. Oh, I enjoy other traditionally English goods like clotted cream and bangers. But it’s really all about the candy. The chocolate. I think they must have better cows making the milk over there (actually English Cadbury has more milk than American Cadbury, which has wax instead).

For your basic chocolate bar, Cadbury has the Dairy Milk. It’s a classic. And it pairs well with a nice cup of English Breakfast or Assam. Something nice and malty to balance out the sweetness of the chocolate.

Then there is the Crunchie. This has to be one of the most decadent candies I have ever had the pleasure of enjoying, and I can only eat about half at a time because it’s so sweet. You see, the middle is a “honeycomb.” It’s not really, honey, but it sure tastes like it. So basically, it’s chocolate covered sugar. And what’s wrong with that? But because it is so sweet, it really needs to be paired with something on the other end of the spectrum. I like it with a nice spicy masala, something with pink peppercorns.

Then there’s the Yorkie from Nestle, which has to sell most of its bars because of the clever reverse-psychology slogan: “Not for Girls.” Apparently this was controversial, as a way of marketing to men, but I took it as ironic, and bought it happily. It’s chunky chocolate, but I did have a variety with raisins once that was lovely. It’s not much different than the Dairy Milk, but I feel like it needs a good strong tea just because of the name, so I go with an Irish Breakfast.

Go ahead. Look at the British chocolates, and just see if they look so much better than the bars in line at American grocery stores. I know where my allegiance lies in chocolate patriotism.

Stephanie publishes her own blog called The Tea Scoop. Check it out! It’s great!

You can find them till the end of this year. There are five different packaging from 1937, 1946, 1957, 1970 and 1983. But ,with the same design and amount of the current one.  Ah, the same price too.

The Nestlé culture

Apart from its commitment to safety and quality and its respect for diversity, Nestlé is committed to a number of cultural values. These values come partly from its Swiss roots and have been developed during its history. They are also evolving so as to support the permanent reshaping of the Company.

They can be described as follows:
• Commitment to a strong work ethic, integrity, honesty and quality.
• Personal relations based on trust and mutual respect. This implies a sociable attitude towards others, combined with an ability
to communicate openly and frankly.
• A personalised and direct way of dealing with each other. This implies a high level of tolerance for other ideas and opinions, as
well as a relentless commitment to co-operate proactively with others.
• A more pragmatic than dogmatic approach to business. This implies being realistic and basing decisions on facts.
• Openness and curiosity for dynamic and future trends in technology, changes in consumer habits, new business ideas and opportunities, while maintaining respect for basic human
values, attitudes and behaviour.
• Pride in contributing to the reputation and the performance of the Company. This calls especially for nurturing a sense of quality
and long-term achievement in the daily work beyond fashion and shortsighted gain.
• Loyalty to and identification with the Company.

The Case Study

Consider this case involving the Company and a distributor, Forefront IT Trading Corp., owned by Filipino investors who are now complaining of unfair and unethical business practices by their foreign partners. In a disgusting display of corporate bullying, the multinational refused to pay Forefront’s more than P12 million in collectibles unless it signed a Release and Quit Claim dropping all other legitimate claims. This when a ranking official of the foreign firm had promised, verbally, the settlement of all just and reasonable claims.
The amount consisted of close to P1 million in withheld expanded value-added tax (EVAT) for 2007 that the multinational should refund to Forefront, plus P11.07 million representing performance incentives, advances made by Forefront for the company’s promotional activities and cost of products taken back by the multinational.
The multinational allegedly took back the products in Forefront’s possession after terminating the distributorship agreement when the latter protested the meddling and unprofessional conduct of the multinational’s sales official assigned to it. The distributor had wanted a replacement.
It turned out that the multinational’s sales official was carrying on an extramarital relationship with a Forefront executive, a married man. She exploited this relationship to secure unusually large orders of her employer’s products and even slow-moving items that Forefront had to dispose of even at cost, even to the extent of forgoing profits. Santa Banana, she even succeeded in passing on to Forefront some poorly paying accounts not included in the original agreement. All these eventually resulted in huge losses to the distributor.
This came to a point where Forefront experienced difficulties in meeting its payroll, the 13th month pay for December 2007, and separation benefits for some 80 employees who had to go as a result of severe financial stress.
When advised of the affair and the resulting conflict of interest situation, the latter simply dismissed the matter as “a purely personal affair between two consenting adults,” and ignored the request that their sales official be replaced. Yet, the multinational’s own Corporate Business Principles and Code of Conduct states, among other things, that the company “requires its management and employees to avoid even the appearance of impropriety in its business relationships on behalf of the company.”

“All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.” Mahatma Gandhi

Hopensato di pubblicare un interessante articolo tratto da Il sole 24 ore. Perchè credo sia importante conoscere quello che fanno i nostri clienti e cosa succede nel mondo in cui lavoriamo.

Nestlé pensa a Cadbury
Incontri privati con le banche.

22 novermbre 2009

Alla fine i tantissimi rumors potrebbero concretizzarsi. Secondo quanto riporta Bloomberg e il sito MarketWatch (del network del Wall Street Journal), Nestlè starebbe valutando l’opzione di una possibile offerta per Cadbury. Sia Bloomberg che MarketWatch vanno, com’è ovvio, con “i piedi di piombo”. Usano tutti i condizionali possibili, vista la fluidità della situazione con gli scenari che cambiano di giorno in giorno ( se non di ora in ora), ma alla fine, citando fonti competenti sull’affairedelle caramelle e del cioccolato, sottolineano che qualcosa si sta muovendo.

La Nestlé sta rivedendo le sue opzioni con le banche e potrebbe decidere di muoversi, sfidando l’offerta di Kraft (17 miliardi di dollari) che, per adesso, è stata rigettata da Cadbury in quanto ritenuta troppo bassa. Com è noto, proprio sulla scia del passo effettuato dal colosso americano delle sottilette, si era mossa Hershey e poi l’italianissima Ferrero. L’ipotesi che poteva (o potrebbe) concretizzarsi era quella di un’offerta concordata tra la società di Alba e Hershey. Tuttavia, secondo Bloomberg, la presenza nella partita di Ferrero sarebbe sempre più difficile. Non è un mistero, peraltro, la diffidenza (se non contrarietà) all’operazione da parte del fondatore del gruppo Michele Ferrero. Che si scontrebbe contro la volontà, invece, dei due figli Pietro e Giovanni convinti della necessità di fare un salto di dimensioni. Soprattutto adesso che il mondo del cioccolato si consolida sempre di più e richiede maggiori economie di scala e di scopo.

Certo, si tratta di un’operazione che richiede di sborsare molti danari. «Quanti ce ne vorranno? – si chiede Jon Cox, analista di Kepler Capital Markets- Se Nestlè vuole, le finanze per realizzare l’offerta ce le ha». Peraltro la stessa Hershey, secondo molti rumors, potrebbe essere partner nell’operazione. «Ciò che potrebbe creare qualche problema – afferma Thomas Russo, partner di Lancaster – è la possibile posizione dominante nel mercato del cioccolato. Cosa che, invece, non accadrebbe per quello del chewing gum, visto che Nestlé non possiede un business legato ai bubble gum».

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Lauren shot a commercial for Nestle for JWT that’s now airing. With the exception of the grandmother, everyone you see here is a real family cast by Lauren and her team.

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Click on the photo to view the commercial.

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Lauren shot a commercial for Nestle for JWT that’s now airing. With the exception of the grandmother, everyone you see here is a real family cast by Lauren and her team.

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"Mmmm...merger."

The American dairy corporation Kraft Foods offered the British chocolate company, Cadbury, close to $17 billon to merge in September. Cadbury doesn’t want to merge.

Hershey, another American chocolate corporation, has considered an offer of at least $17 billion.  No answer.

Hershey is not doing as well as Kraft (financially). Hershey’s market value on November 20 was an estimated $8.5 billion, which is not much compared to the value of Kraft Foods (over $40 billion).  Cadbury’s market value is the European equivalent to a little over $18 billion.

At this point, a battle with Kraft puts Hershey at a disadvantage.

Plus, Ferrero (Italy) and Nestlé (Switzerland) are thinking about making offers for Cadbury too.

Seems bittersweet right now, but we’ll see how it goes.

More as it happens, chocolate lovers!

For the New York Times article, visit 23hershey.html?th&emc=th