Pet food powers Nestle during lockdowns

Standout sales of petfood made up for less demand for jumbo Milo and Nescafe tins during the pandemic.

Elizabeth Proust. Picture: David Geraghty / The Australian.

Recently retired Nestle Australia chairman Elizabeth Proust says the global conglomerate whose powerhouse brands include Nescafe, Nespresso, Milo, Allen’s lollies, Kit Kat and Purina pet food, had a “sterling year” in 2020 as lockdowns encouraged home cooking.

Ms Proust said sales for its professional arm, which sells packaged foods into offices such as giant tins of Milo and Nescafe coffee, as well as capsules, did suffer as towers across the capital cities were emptied during the COVID-19 pandemic and office workers set up new workstations at home.

However, countering that was a strong year for Nestle’s flagship pet food brand Purina as many people decided to buy a pet.

“It was a stellar year last year for pet food as people stayed at home and bought a dog or a cat,” Ms Proust told The Australian as she stepped down from Nestle Australia as its chairman and director following 11 years on the board of the Swiss-based coffee, confectionary, wellness and pet food company.

Reflecting on 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic, Ms Proust said through the year she often swayed between optimism and pessimism, while she also applauded the response of Australian governments to the pandemic and in particular the effectiveness of the establishment of the National Cabinet. She maintained a “big issue” for Australia following the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic would be getting young people back into education and tackling rising youth unemployment.

Turning to Nestle Australia’s performance through 2020, Ms Proust said it was a “bumpy time” for food manufacturers.

“Ironically because we all stayed at home and cooked meals, stayed in, the food industry, supermarkets and food manufactures, had a bumpy year. There perhaps was a question mark for the food growers as they had difficulty finding people to actually pick the product.”

“Nestle Australia, which is a December year end, had a sterling year in all of its products accept Nestle ‘professional’. Nestle ‘professional’ is that which goes into offices, so coffee machines, capsules and the enormous tins of Milo and the like, anything that serves the office. But everything else did extremely well.”

Ms Proust said she believed the key issue for food manufacturers going forward will be how to ratchet up exports and attract the investment capital to develop new products and innovate.

She said the biggest manufacturing investment in her time at Nestle Australia was the Purina pet food factory in Blayney, NSW, which benefited from a $90m upgrade - and which ultimately proved a good decision as the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns encouraged a significant increase in pet ownership.

The experienced corporate director, whose other boardroom seats include a director of Lendlease and recently appointed chairman of payments group Cuscal, said like many Australians battling through the pandemic she had mixed emotions as the health crisis emerged.

“Probably like everybody I wavered between optimism and pessimism, I think the December figures on exports were encouraging given the poor state of relations with China. But I think we and New Zealand, Singapore and very few other countries, are really well placed.

“But we are an outward bound exporting nation that even with the vaccines rolling out in some parts of the world, it is pretty dire in the US, Europe and UK, and in other countries where we probably can’t trust the figures about the coronavirus.”

Ms Proust said there were still many social and economic issues Australia had to deal with but despite the obstacles and set backs the National Cabinet had been a success.

“One of the things I thought worked really well was the National Cabinet, and everybody says we have too many levels of government but when it came to a crisis across party lines people worked together.”