The information website by, for and about
the tomato processing industry globally

Panamá: Nestlé will close the La Villa plant in 2023

20/04/2020

François-Xavier Branthôme
Panama,
Central America
The national production of processing tomatoes in Panama is located in the province of Los Santos (districts of Macaracas, Guararé and Tonosí), where the Nestlé company buys up 100% of the quantities that are harvested.

The association representing the tomato industry in the Azuero region recently announced that the current season (2020/2021) and the following one (2021/2022) would be the last ones during which tomatoes harvested in the region would be processed by the Nestlé SA company, located in the city of La Villa de Los Santos.

 
The General director of Nestlé Los Santos, Max Gutiérrez, indicated that the company had decided to progressively shift its operations from Los Santos to Natá, located about 80 km away in the neighboring province of Coclé. Growers and employees of the Nestlé company do not yet know what their future role might be, if any, for the tomato season in 2022/2023. Mr. Gutiérrez added that the company had invested PAB 16 million (Panamanian Balboa) (or EUR 14.7 million) in order to set up a new factory in Natá.

The spokesperson for growers acknowledged that in the absence of any company to compete with Nestlé, the transfer of the plant represented a hard blow for local agriculture. Currently, some 67 growers have planted 123 hectares of processing tomatoes, for a crop estimated at approximately 6 000 tonnes intended for Nestlé. The price of raw tomatoes has been fixed for the 2020/2021 season at PAB 8 per Panamanian quintal (slightly less than EUR 160 per metric tonne) if the agricultural yield is lower than 1400 quintals/ha (64.4 mT/ha), or PAB 7 (slightly less than EUR 140 /mT) if the yield rises above the threshold of 1400 quintals/ha.

At the same time, the President of the Asociación de Tomate Industrial announced that discussions had started with the government in view of the fact that it had originally been planned that the Nestlé company should hand over its installations to local operators and continue to purchase their processed production.

Source: prensa.com