On the heels of announcing the creation of a new center for deep tech, Nestlé has forged a new partnership with IBM that will leverage the power of artificial intelligence (AI) to boost its innovation pipeline by identifying new high-barrier packaging materials.

Beyond fast-tracking the identification of future packaging materials, this AI partnership will also consider cost, recyclability, and functionality as it relates to ensuring food safety and quality.

Specifically, Nestlé will direct AI to construct a knowledge base of known materials from public and proprietary documents, following a fine-tuned, fit-for-purpose chemical language model that will enable it to learn the representation of molecular structures. That knowledge will be used to learn the correlation between key structural molecular features and the resulting physical-chemical properties, enabling the proposal of new high-barrier packaging materials that shield sensitive products from moisture, temperature swings, and oxygen.

Deep tech center's high-tech R&D redeployment
The IBM AI partnership is Nestlé’s latest investment geared toward unlocking “a leaner R&D organization, more agile ways of working, a focused project portfolio, and the redeployment of existing R&D resources.” The company says the creation of the deep tech center is slated to open in the first half of 2026 at the existing facilities of the Nestlé System Technology Center in Orbe, Switzerland. Here, the company will screen, test, and develop new generations of sensors, robots, coding systems, high-performing AI, and virtual/mixed reality solutions to increase efficiency in research, innovation, and operations.
A Nestlé spokesperson tells Packaging Digest that the new center is part of the company’s work to continuously transform its R&D organization to respond to new technological and consumer trends with agility.

“The current Nestlé System Technology Center will evolve into our center of excellence for deep tech,” the spokesperson says. “Our existing capabilities in sensor technology, artificial intelligence, data processing, hardware components, virtual/mixed reality, robotics, and coding systems will become an integral part of the new deep tech center.”