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By Agroempresario.com
In a bold move to lead the future of food, Nestlé is launching a new deep tech center in Orbe, Switzerland, by the first half of 2026. This ambitious project aims to solidify the company's transformation into a real-time, AI-powered connected enterprise, enhancing innovation across key growth areas such as precision nutrition, artificial intelligence, robotics, and biotechnology.
Under the leadership of CEO Laurent Freixe, who succeeded Mark Schneider in late 2024, Nestlé is ramping up investments in technologies that align with its vision of future-ready nutrition. The newly announced deep tech center, located at the Nestlé System Technology Center, will serve as the hub for developing solutions that combine cutting-edge AI, sensor systems, and biotech tools to meet evolving consumer and industry demands.
Freixe's tenure marks a strategic shift toward what Nestlé calls its “big bets,” which include Nescafé Espresso Concentrate, a product that allows consumers to prepare café-style cold espresso drinks at home. This innovation represents Nestlé’s broader aim to fuse digital technologies with consumer-centric food experiences, offering both convenience and personalization.
But beyond coffee, Nestlé’s deeper ambitions lie in transforming nutrition science—with a specific focus on women’s health, healthy longevity, and weight management. These segments are set to benefit directly from the output of the new center.
The deep tech center will function as a multidisciplinary innovation lab, focusing on next-generation sensors, AI-powered robotics, virtual and mixed reality, dynamic quality assurance, and self-controlling equipment. Nestlé says these technologies will enable the creation of smart coffee machines and other advanced appliances that improve user experience and operational efficiency.
Moreover, precision nutrition is expected to be a key pillar of the center’s work. Leveraging AI and clinical biotechnology, Nestlé plans to design food products tailored to individual health needs. This aligns with the company's growing emphasis on science-based, personalized nutrition, targeting areas like maternal health, early life nutrition, and medical nutrition.
According to Nestlé, this facility will also feed into innovation pipelines for pet care, especially in pet therapeutics, further expanding its biotechnology applications to non-human consumers.
The Orbe center will also invest in advanced biotech research, including precision fermentation, screening assays, and clinical validation of bio-actives. Nestlé aims to develop new generations of postbiotics, synbiotics, and other bioactives that deliver clinically proven efficacy.
Chief Technology Officer Stefan Palzer highlighted the significance of these capabilities:
“The industry-leading biotechnology capabilities will deliver new ingredients with clinically proven bio-efficacy for precision nutrition for people and pets along their entire lifespan.”
These innovations will support both Nestlé’s human health and animal nutrition divisions, reinforcing its dual-focus on lifespan nutrition solutions.
Nestlé’s larger digital strategy emphasizes becoming a real-time, data-driven enterprise. The company is already using AI across various functions, including e-commerce, where it helps optimize digital shelves and generate personalized content for online consumers. This deep tech investment marks a continuation of that approach, now applied to product development and manufacturing.
The center is expected to support real-time analytics, remote control systems, and product recognition tools, facilitating more agile, data-informed decisions across its global operations.
While Nestlé did not disclose specific funding details, it stated that resources for the center would be unlocked by restructuring:
“These investments will be unlocked by a leaner R&D organization, more agile ways of working, a focused project portfolio and the redeployment of existing R&D resources.”
This signals a shift toward operational efficiency, where smarter investments in fewer but high-impact initiatives will drive both cost control and innovation acceleration.
The center’s biotech advancements will also help develop new platforms in healthy aging, hormonal balance, and clinical-grade nutrition, tapping into rapidly growing markets focused on wellness and preventative care. These platforms align with Nestlé’s evolving identity—not just as a food manufacturer, but as a nutrition and health company.
The company’s ongoing research into clinical-grade supplements, including those for cognitive function, metabolic health, and gut microbiome balance, will gain momentum from the new center’s capabilities in precision assays and biological modeling.
As competition in the nutrition innovation space intensifies, Nestlé’s early investment in deep tech could give it a decisive edge. By integrating AI, biotech, and advanced robotics, the company is positioning itself at the forefront of a new era in food science and consumer health.
Its location in Orbe, Switzerland, also plays a strategic role, providing proximity to Nestlé’s global R&D ecosystem and access to Switzerland’s renowned biotech talent pool.
