Our business at a glance

Two billion consumers worldwide use a Unilever product on any given day. Our products make small but important differences to the quality of people’s everyday lives.

Our business & brands

Unilever is one of the leading suppliers of fast-moving consumer goods, with products on sale in more than 180 countries. Our strong portfolio of foods, home and personal care brands is trusted by consumers the world over – they buy 170 billion packs of our products every year.

We make some of the world’s best known brands, with leadership positions in many of the categories in which we compete. Our top 12 brands all have sales of more than 1 billion euros, and with a further eight brands with sales of more than 1 billion euros, our top 20 brands represent around 70% of our sales.

Our 12 one billion euro brands are Axe/Lynx, Blue Band, Dove, Becel/Flora, Heartbrand ice creams, Hellmann’s, Knorr, Lipton, Lux, Omo, Rexona and Sunsilk.

Against a backdrop of slow economic growth, food price volatility and geopolitical instability, our business has performed well in 2010. Turnover was up 11% on 2009 to €44.3bn and operating profits rose 26% to €6.3bn.

We achieved volume growth of 5.8% – the best for over 30 years. Our growth was both competitive - we gained market share in many of our leading categories – and profitable, with a steady improvement in underlying operating margin.

We are continually strengthening our portfolio. We do this either by expanding existing categories into new geographies or via ‘bolt on’ acquisitions that help to build our presence, either in more countries or at a wider range of price points.

During 2010 we completed the acquisition of the personal care business of Sara Lee. It added to our portfolio leading brands such as Radox, Duschdas and Neutral. We have strengthened our ice cream business with a series of smaller acquisitions in Greece and Denmark that will further enhance our leadership position in this category. We also announced an agreement to acquire Alberto Culver which includes brands such as TRESemme, Nexxus and St Ives. (This transaction remains subject to regulatory approval.)

With more than half our business in fast-growing emerging markets we are well positioned for future growth. Asia, Africa and Central & Eastern Europe (Asia Africa CEE) is now our largest region and the fastest growing. We are also experiencing good growth in Latin America.