General Mills sees good growth at Nestle venture

CHICAGO (Reuters) - U.S. food group General Mills Inc (GIS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) expects strong growth from its breakfast cereal joint venture it runs with Swiss-based Nestle (NESN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) in areas such as eastern Europe and Asia in the coming years.

The 18-year-old joint venture, called Cereal Partners Worldwide, operates outside North America and markets products such as Cheerios, Fitnesse and Shreddies in many regions where the breakfast cereal market is still expanding rapidly.

"Outside the U.S., UK and Australia the per capita consumption of breakfast cereals is still quite low and we see rapid development in eastern Europe and Asia," General Mills Chief Executive Kendall Powell told the Reuters Food Summit in Chicago on Wednesday.

Powell said the annual worldwide breakfast cereal market was worth around $16-17 billion and only recently had the non-U.S. market overtaken the United States with a value of around $9 billion.

He said the joint venture with the world's largest food company Nestle had been a great success with current annual sales of over 3 billion Swiss francs from over 130 markets compared with sales of just 100 million Swiss francs when the venture was formed in 1990.

Minneapolis-based General Mills is the No 2 breakfast cereal player in the U.S. and also globally behind Kellogg Co (K.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).

(For summit blog: summitnotebook.reuters.com/)

(Reporting by David Jones; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)