Food and drink company Nestlé will pay homage to 1,000 coffee producers in Chiapas, Oaxaca and Veracruz with special packaging bearing their names and photos.

The “Nescafé tribute” campaign will give consumers the opportunity “to known the face and names of those behind the coffee they drink every day,” explained Phillip Navratil, coffee and drinks vice-president at Nestlé México.

Nestlé works with close to 80,000 coffee growers in Mexico.

The campaign is designed to bring consumers closer to the coffee suppliers, many of whom have worked with the Swiss company for generations, explained executive president Fausto Costa.

Half a million bags of coffee with the new packaging will appear on store shelves throughout Mexico in early September.

Nestlé has invested about 200 million pesos (US $13.4 million) since 2010 in its Nescafé Plan, of which the new packaging initiative is a part, in an effort to produce high-impact economic and social initiatives in coffee-growing communities.

“We are looking to grow production. [But] it needs a lot of help, not just from the private sector but the public sector as well, along with other businesses and organizations that support the farmers,” Costa said.

He explained that over the last eight years Nestlé has delivered close to 29 million plants to coffee growers and organized 83,000 training sessions to inform them about sustainable farming techniques.

“We know that the challenge at the global level is to see that agriculture continues to grow without provoking environmental imbalance,” he said.

Nestlé is the largest coffee buyer in Mexico, Costa said, buying 29% of national production.

Source: Milenio (sp), El Financiero (sp)