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Unilever announce a strong start to the year

8th May 2008, 12:07pm

Unilever the firm behind brands such as Knorr, Hellmann’s, Wall’s and Flora has today announced a promising start to the year with overall sales growing by 7.2%.

In a statement the company said that there had been broad-based growth across regions and categories, with developing and emerging markets looking particularly strong.

Profits increased to €1.34bn compared with €1.01bn recorded a year earlier.

Factors contributing to this rise include prices up 4.8% in response to commodity costs, the sale of Boursin cheeses and the extension of the Pepsi and Lipton brands throughout the first quarter of this year.

Speaking about the results Patrick Cescau, Group Chief Executive highlighted how the company expects these results to be repeated throughout the year: "We have had a good start to the year, with strong organic growth across our categories and an underlying improvement in operating margin. We continue to invest behind our brands, while taking the necessary pricing action to recover a sharp increase in commodity costs.

"We have a strong innovation programme for 2008, with many important initiatives already in the market. We expect our productivity and value improvement initiatives to continue to deliver excellent results.

"The disciplined execution of our strategy, together with the combined advantage of strong brands, a product range serving consumer's everyday needs and our broad geographical footprint, leave us well placed to deliver competitive growth with an underlying improvement in operating margin in 2008, despite challenging conditions.

"While it is early in the year, we now expect underlying sales growth in 2008 to exceed our 3-5% target range."

Tea, ice cream and spreads were particularly strong.

The company plans to strengthen the nutritional credentials of its brands through the new Knorr 'eat colour' soups range and the Rama 'healthy oils' campaign.

Its partnership with the Rainforest Alliance has seen the certification of Lipton Yellow Label teas across the region and PG Tips in the UK and in ice cream Unilever has extended the Frusi range of fruit, yoghurt and cereal snacks, and launched new Magnum 'minis'.

Lower fat spreads and dressings, such as Hellmann's new 'free range egg' extra light mayonnaise will offer a healthy option while at the same time reduce the firm's dependence on costly vegetable oils.

Words Clare Riley 0 comments

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