Nestlé, from Vevey to the world

In 1866 the American brothers Charles and George Page founded the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Company in Cham, turning Swiss milk into condensed milk for export. A year later in Vevey, the German-born pharmacist Henri Nestlé began selling Farine Lactée, a milk-based food for infants.

The two companies competed for decades before merging in 1905. Nescafé followed in 1938 and became a staple of the US military during the Second World War. In 1947 the merger with Maggi, the Swiss soup and seasoning maker, created Nestlé Alimentana.

More than 150 years on, the group is still headquartered in Vevey and employs about 271,000 people worldwide.