Nestlé’s nutrition head on declining birth rates and ageing populations

Serena Aboutboul is a self described “Nestlé animal”. She’s been with the business for over three decades during a career that’s taken her to Brazil, Mexico and Nestlé’s Switzerland home turf.

During that time, she’s utilised her specialist knowledge to focus on infant nutrition, Nestlé’s Health Science, as well as heading nutrition for EMENA. Now she runs the show for the whole business as Nestlé’s head of nutrition.

With these decades of experience under her belt, she understands more than anyone how shifting demographics are changing demand, removing some opportunities and creating others.

So what are Aboutboul’s pain points and focuses? And how is she tackling the evermoving needs of consumers?

Serena Aboutboul (Nestlé)Infant nutrition continues to growBirth rates around the world are on the decline. And this, she says, is putting significant pressure on infant nutrition businesses like Nestlé.

While the level of this decline varies from country to country, it is certainly a key trend in major markets such as Europe and China.

“The headwinds in declining birth rates are putting some pressure on the category,” says Aboutboul. Nevertheless, the category is still seeing “pockets of growth”.

It is being kept alive in part, says Aboutboul, by products aimed at specific health challenges. These niche areas are growing faster than the category as a whole.

For example, products for allergies and intolerances, such as protein intolerance and lactose intolerance, are successful. So are products aimed at babies that are not being breastfed, which aim to prevent inappropriate feeding (with things such as rice water and cow’s milk) by providing babies with the nutrients they’re missing out on.

Beyond this, premiumisation is all the rage. “Premium solutions are also growing faster than the category,” with premium brands like Nan gaining significant market share.

Growth remains in infant nutrition due to a number of specialist categories. (Jose Luis Pelaez Inc/Getty Images)There are obviously children being born, just many parents are having fewer. This means they can focus their resources. This creates even more opportunity to upsell parents to premium products.

Premium infant nutrition offers “superior solutions that are driven and backed up by science”, says Aboutboul.

Parents with fewer children, she suggests, are interested in exploring information about their child’s health themselves, and finding science-backed solutions for their children.

This boom for premium brands is part of the trend towards the “polarisation of consumption,” meaning that markets for premium products and value products are growing, whereas sales of mid-priced products are declining.

Not only are women having fewer children, but they are having children later in life as well. This has the potential to increase risk for mothers. “Later pregnancies may trigger more fertility issues,” explains Aboutboul.

Nestlé’s maternal range, including brands like Materna, have been developed to address and tap into these opportunities. Products launched last year from the brand aim to contribute to fertility, as well as ease certain pregnancy symptoms, such as nausea and vomiting.

However, Nestlé’s infant nutrition products have in the past attracted controversy. Particularly when it comes to sugar content in baby food.

Last year, the NGO Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) published a report which alleged that sugar was found in baby food. This was specifically infant cereal brand Cerelac and powdered milk brand Nido, sold in lower income countries such as Thailand, Ethiopia, South Africa, and Bangladesh. Though this wasn’t the case in higher income countries like Switzerland, the UK, France and Germany.

According to Aboutboul, the upper threshold of the sugar Nestlé adds to its infant cereals is half the maximum level recommended by the Codex Alimentarius, a set of internationally recommended standards by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

Alongside this upper threshold, the amount of sugar in infant cereals varies from market to market, with such variants largely driven by taste, acceptance, and culture. “Taste matters in baby food, because baby food, especially in infant cereals, is a carrier of nutrients like iodine, like vitamin D and vitamin A,” explains Aboutboul.

While it has non-added sugar baby food in all markets, Aboutboul says, Nestlé is accelerating the amount of variants without sugar available in all markets.

Furthermore, in some countries added sugar is labelled and in some it is not, she says.

The rise of healthy ageingThe flip-side of declining birth rates is that societies are becoming older, with greater numbers of people living to an age where they need to cater to specific health needs stemming from advanced years.

Nestlé has seen rapid success in this sector. While only recently becoming a major player in the healthy ageing market, it has nevertheless risen to either the number one or two position in the markets it has entered.

Because of an ageing population, healthy ageing is a key growth area for Nestlé. (Bloom Productions/Getty Images)Healthy ageing products target many areas, including energy, digestion, bone health, muscle mass, and cognitive health.

Nestlé is also focusing on developing more digestible protein for older consumers. “When you age, you need more protein and not less. What happens is that your digestion is not coping with that?

“That’s why people, when they age, would not eat a big steak for dinner, because they are probably not going to sleep.”

“What you need to do is to provide high quality protein that is easily digestible.”

Serena AboutboulThus, protein that remains digestible for these older consumers must be provided.

With Nestlé’s dairy and plant-based protein, it hopes to provide more digestible protein for people at an older age.

“What you need to do is to provide high quality protein that is easily digestible,” she says.

More people are talking about women’s health Not only is catering to women’s health becoming a more prominent trend within food and drink manufacture, but more women are looking into health and that is in turn driving the category harder.

“We see women looking into how nutrition impacts their health, and more and more women sharing topics that they were not sharing before,” Aboutboul tells us.

“We see women looking into how nutrition impacts their health, and more and more women sharing topics that they were not sharing before.”

Serena AboutboulMenopause, conversations around which have become more prominent recently, is one example of this.

For Nestlé, this increasing awareness of certain health topics is an opportunity.

R&D and affordability Though the business is working hard to target and grow its reach within infant and health ageing nutrition, there is one restrictor. Cost.

“Affordability is something that is important and matters to all life stages,” she stresses.

Nestlé sees better affordability of its products as a growth enabler, the result of which is her division invests more in R&D than any other within the business, she says.

And that will be her focus over the coming years; to continue adapting to changing consumer needs and demographics through investment and R&D.