Switzerland-based food company Nestlé has used its €650m ($872m) corporate venturing funds to help start a health science division from January.
Nestlé plans to invest SFr500m ($510m) over the next decade to tackle obesity and chronic disease through the division and has moved Luis Cantarell from running its Americas region to "pioneer a new industry between food and pharma".
The new division will include the group’s existing healthcare nutrition business, which had sales of SFr1.6bn last year, but not Alcon, its specialist eyecare business, which was recently sold to local drugs group Novartis.
It will also include external companies the firm has backed through its two disclosed corporate venturing funds.
Nestlé in 2002 committed €150m to a fund managed by local venture capital firm Inventages Ventures Capital and followed up with a further €500m commitment in September 2005. This second fund, "intended to help Nestlé grow new promising businesses in the area of science and nutrition into a size that could allow them to be integrated into mainstream business units of the group," according to its statement at the time, also saw Wolfgang Reichenberger (pictured) move to Inventages from his role as chief financial officer of the Swiss chocolate company.