Elizabeth Black / 14 June 2025 / Categories: Food & Drink, Product and Brands, Brands

San Pellegrino drinks brand is owned by Nestle

Nestle buy Palm Oil from AAL or Astra Agro Lestrari

Astra Agro Lestrari’s land grab in Central and West Sulawesi, Indonesia, backed by asset managers BlackRock is going on without the consent of the people that live there and what’s this got to do with San Pelligrino?

Fair to say I love a San Pelligrino Aranciata or Limonata, combo fruit juice and fizzy water, the closest thing you can get to a citron or orange presse in a can. And I am not stupid enough to think the brands we love and enjoy are all ethical or have B corporation credentials and credibility. Although I do try my best not to support or buy into anything when I discover what the companies behind the brands are up to, in this case American giant Nestle, who also own big product names like Nescafé instant coffee and Kitkat. There are loads of others we instantly recognise a list too long to cite here.

Chains of bad behaviour are often hard to follow and are smudged out by corporations when it comes to glossy marketing campaigns of products we love.

Imagine what we’d all think if when we saw an advert for San Pelligrino, instead of seeing a beautiful couple say sipping delicious iced cold drinks in an idyllic setting we saw the indigenous people of Central and West Sulawesi, Indonesia crying out against illegal land grabbing of local farm land and deforestation to make way for tens of thousands of acres of palm oil production, palm oil used in the manufacture of literally thousands of branded products we use every day purchased by companies like Nestle, Proctor and Gamble, Pepsi Co. Would we be so eager to buy these products and support this behaviour.

Not everyone is an activist, I get that, and I am not an active member of any organisation fighting for change like Greenpeace or Friends of the Earth but I do like to think I am open, curious and try to stay somewhat informed about what large corporations are up to.

And even though the activities of AAL in Indonesia do actually breach the corporate policies of a few of this massive corporations they still continue to trade with them.

SAN Pelligrino drinks don’t contain palm oil. I have already stopped eating things like Nutella and Kit Kats that do due to a passive awareness that Palm Oil production is a very unscrupulous business.

Now I’ve found out what Nestle the parent of San Pellegrino are up to I won’t be drinking it anymore.

I’ll be making my own limonata and aranciata instead. And when I am out and about and on the go I’ll stick to small batch produced fresh drinks instead.

The big boys, when you look deeper and follow the chain back to poor indigenous people trying to fight for their homelands against fund and asset managers like BlackRock who provide the investment for companies like AAL to do what they do it’s usually not very pretty.

I am sure I buy more things that I am unaware who are the people behind them, washing powder, air freshener, toothpaste but when I discover a brand like Colgate is part of the bigger global problem I eliminate.

We have so much power as consumers. If we stop buying what these companies produce for us in protest, what will they be forced to do, that’s right. They will have to change their ways. It’s only because we have no idea they get to carry on making money at any cost, something I just don’t agree with.

My San Pellegrino Aranciato enjoyment just isn’t worth it.