It also has a strong commitment to promote local supplies. The Farmers program, for example, works with ranchers and allows Philadelphia cream cheese to be produced entirely with local milk at its plant in Ecatepec, State of Mexico.
At a global level, Mondeléz International has similar programs, one for wheat producers in Europe and a global one for cocoa. The latter, Cocoa Life, which is especially important in Brazil, could be replicated in Mexico to obtain this raw material sustainably. “Beyond it being local consumption, what we are also looking for is that it be Fairtrade, that we really work well with the chain to make sure that it is something positive for everyone,” says Bonaclocha. “We didn’t have chocolate before, we just bought chocolate and we have to evaluate this.”
With the purchase, the company will double its business in Mexico and the manager points out that when the company talks about seeking growth, it does so beyond the organic growth of the category. And that implies innovating in the market. To this end, in 2019 it inaugurated in Tlalnepantla, State of Mexico, one of the 12 innovation and development centers that the company has around the world. Between 95 and 97% of what is sold in Mexico is produced here, and there are few imports, but it exports more than 40% of its production to more than 26 countries.
eat the future
Bonaclocha points out that, by 2030, and in accordance with the company’s vision at a global level, the future in the country is “bright” and “sweet”. “We have a new base to work on. In the end, having a size that allows you to do big adventures, having a reach of market in very important routes and to be able to have that capability that we were missing, for example, in chocolate, it gives us all the options to do. We have the talent, the brands and the necessary capabilities, I see a sweet and promising future”.
The manager has also seen how his day-to-day and his role changed with the integration. In the end, he assures, it is not that he has to do new things, but there are points that he must work on more. “I believe that a leader always has to be helping to see the future and prepare the organization. At a time like this, he has to do it more than before,” says the president of Mondeléz Snacking México, who joined the company in 2018 and who had previously worked for more than 20 years at Henkel, rising through various leadership positions, the last of them as president for the Latin American region.
So his gaze is now, above all, on the future, to see where the organization has to take the next steps, establish how the company wants to be and what is the commitment and culture that will take it there.
This process has also left Bonaclocha personal lessons. The main one, she says, is that you can never plan everything. “You have to think that 30 or 40% of what is going to happen to you in this integration are things that you had not even imagined, both in things that you thought were going in one direction and going in another, and also in others that you are learning . In the end, when you buy a business, you do it because you are convinced that it does ABC well, but there are five other things that you were not aware of and you are learning. So, it is the management of uncertainty and that openness to learn more things”.