Mexico City: Mexico’s President Enrique Pena Nieto inaugurated a 1.6-billion-peso (Dh475.76 million) expansion of a Nestle instant coffee factory in the central city of Toluca.
The project has boosted the plant’s productive capacity by 30 per cent, making it the world’s biggest facility of its kind, Nestle Mexico CEO Marcelo Melchior said during Friday’s ceremony.
The factory, which covers a 14-hectare area, will supply the Mexican, US, Central American, Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Japanese markets, the Swiss food giant said in a statement.
As part of the remodelling, a biomass boiler was installed to process spent coffee grounds from the production process for use as fuel, thereby covering 60 per cent of the plant’s electricity needs.
The new system will enable a 37,000-tonne reduction in carbon dioxide emissions, equivalent to taking more than 11,800 cars off the roads for a year, the company said.