Swiss food company Nestlé has opened CHF15m ($15.96m) factory in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the company’s first factory in the country.
This move is a part of the company's long-term plan to manufacture products that are better suited to the local tastes and nutritional needs.
The factory, located Kinshasa, produces micronutrient-fortified Maggi culinary products such as bouillon cubes and tablets.
The individually wrapped Maggi bouillons and tablets belong to the company's popularly positioned products' (PPP) range, which provides lower income consumers with access to tasty, affordable nutrition.
Nestlé noted that the Kinshasa factory is a finishing factory - the factory with a flexible design that makes it easily adaptable for different manufacturing purposes, including processing ingredients or packing products. The new factory has created 60 direct jobs.
Nestlé's Equatorial African Region head Ian Donald the company has seen significant growth in the DRC since opening its first distribution centres and sales offices here in 2009, and it is continuing to promote this growth with its first factory in the country.
"It is not only enabling us to respond to the needs of our consumers more quickly, but also to help improve the livelihoods of the local suppliers we are working," Donald added.
The opening of the Kinshasa factory follows the opening of a milk powder factory in Angola in August 2012. Both these factories were built as a part of the company's three-year plan, which was launched in 2010, to invest to invest CHF150m ($159.69m) in Equatorial Africa.
