VEVEY, SWITZERLAND — Cereal Partners Worldwide, a joint venture between Nestle S.A. and General Mills, Inc., is creating a new Innovation Centre in Orbe, Switzerland.

The new center represents an investment of close to 50 million Swiss francs ($48 million) and promotes Cereal Partners’ strategic focus on nutrition, health and wellness, and it will help the company’s development of innovative and nutritious breakfast cereals.

Construction started in early 2009 and is nearly half complete. The center is due to be finished by the middle of 2010.

"The C.P.W. Innovation Center will bring together expertise from Nestle and General Mills in the field of breakfast cereals," Nestle said. "This new Innovation Center will further build on General Mills’ technical strengths and Nestle’s 50 years of R.&D. experience in Orbe as well as on both partners’ know-how in food processing technologies. Part of Cereal Partners Worldwide’s global R.&D. network, the C.P.W. Innovation Centre will work on breakfast cereal solutions that will deliver consumer benefits such as improved nutritional content as well as freshness, taste and texture."