VEVEY, SWITZERLAND — Net profit for Nestle climbed 69% for the full-year 2008, growth the company attributed to continuous innovation and renovation of products and brands.

For the year the company had a profit of 18 billion Swiss francs ($15 billion), up from 11 million Swiss francs in 2008. Sales for the year were 109,909 million Swiss francs ($93,596 million), up 2% from 107,552 million Swiss francs during the previous year.

"Nestle’s 2008 performance reflects its ability to achieve a high level of organic growth together with an improvement in EBIT margin, even in difficult times," said Paul Bulcke, chief executive officer. "The group’s results in 2008 are broad-based, demonstrate its intrinsic strength and provide momentum into 2009. Nestle’s ability to capitalize on a wide variety of market conditions across the world remains one of its decisive competitive advantages. This will enable the group to seize growth opportunities worldwide in 2009 by leveraging the company’s growth platforms, particularly nutrition, health and wellness, and popularly positioned products, while also accelerating its cost efficiency initiatives."

Zone Americas had sales of 33,134 million Swiss francs ($28,209 million), 10.3% organic growth and 2.7% real internal growth.

"We believe that the group will once again be one of the industry’s fastest growth companies in 2009, in line with the long-standing Nestle model, and we are committed to achieving organic growth at least approaching 5% as well as further improvement of the EBIT margin in constant currencies," Mr. Bulcke said.