From Farm to Glass: 8 Steps Nestlé takes to ensure Product Quality
With more than 100 years of operations in Trinidad and Tobago Nestlé has earned the trust of consumers across the nation. Many, many safeguards are built into the manufacturing process to ensure that the Nestlé products reaching you, the consumer, meet the highest levels of quality and safety. This happens thousands of times a day and it’s a heavy responsibility! Nestlé must incorporate the highest possible standards all along the supply chain – from raw materials, to manufacturing, packaging and distribution, to the point of consumption. Here are 10 Steps Nestlé takes, from farm to glass, to make sure that the products you enjoy are of the very best quality.
1. Raw Materials
Nestlé’s Quality Management System starts on farms. We have a long history of working with farmers to help them improve the quality of their milk by helping them introduce special quality controls, like cooling and automated milking systems. Nestlé collects fresh milk from farmers at special Collection Centres each day and tests the milk right on the spot to confirm its quality. The higher the quality of the milk the more we pay the farmer!
2. Careful Transport
Nestlé’s 19,000 litre milk tankercollects milk from the Collection Centres and transports it to the factory: the tanker is specially designed to ensure that milk is kept in the best condition during transport!
3. The Nestlé Factory Laboratory
Every Nestlé factory, all around the world, has a special Laboratory. Immediately on arrival at Nestlé’s Valsayn factory milk is subjected to several tests by our Laboratory to ensure that it is of the highest quality, including an alcohol test to determine levels of bacteria and a visual test to ensure cleanliness. The Laboratory takes samples to determine fat content, bacterial load and other important quality concerns. Only milk meeting Food and Drug standards is accepted by Nestlé’s factory.
4. Sterile Manufacturing Environment
Once milk has been accepted by the Laboratory it undergoes several processes to ensure quality. It is Clarified to remove all foreign matter, then Pasteurised to kill harmful bacteria. Milk then goes through the Separation Process and is Standardised so it meets all the requirements for the composition of fresh milk. Then comes UHT (Ultra High Temperature) Sterilisation, which kills bacteria and other organisms while maintaining the nutritional value of the milk. Finally the milk is Homogenised to ensure that it does not separate.
5. Juices and Drinks
Our Orchard juices and drinks are made by reconstituting fresh fruit concentrates made from only the highest quality fruit and contain added vitamins to make them even more nutritious. These products are made under the same stringent conditions as our milks and use the same sterile packaging.
6. The Nestlé Incubator
Once products come off the factory production line they are held in a special storage facility called the Incubator. Milk is held for 10 days; juices and drinks for three days. During this period the Nestlé Laboratory conducts additional quality assurance checks on each batch. Nestle’s products are released for distribution to shops and supermarkets only after they have passed these final quality control tests
7. Safe Transport
Individual packs are automatically shrink-wrapped into sturdy cases and placed on banded secured and sealed pallets to ensure that the product leaves Nestlé’s factory in good condition!
8. Nestlé Quality Management System
Nestlé applies internationally recognized Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) to ensure quality and food safety as well as the internationally recognized HACCP (Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point) system to ensure food safety, verified by external certification bodies against the international ISO 22’000:2005/ISO 22002-1 standards.