Unilever 2005 Annual Report Download - page 13

10 Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2005
About Unilever
Description of business
Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast moving
consumer goods across foods, home and personal product
categories. Unilever’s portfolio includes some of the world’s best
known and most loved brands.
Regions
Three regional teams are responsible for managing Unilever’s
business in the regions, and for market operations. They are
primarily responsible for winning with customers and deploying
brand events and innovations effectively. The regions are fully
accountable for the profit performance of our business, as well as
growth, cash flows and the in-year development of market
shares.
The Europe region includes our operations in Western Europe and
in Central and Eastern Europe, and in 2005 accounted for
approximately 41% of our business on a turnover basis.
The Americas region includes our operations in North America
and Latin America and represented around 33% of our business.
Our Asia Africa region accounted for 26% of our business, and
includes our operations in the Middle East, Turkey, Africa, Asia
and Australasia.
Categories
Two category teams cover Foods and Home and Personal Care,
and are responsible for each category and the brands therein.
They are fully responsible for brand development and innovation,
as well as brand and category management. Categories also lead
some elements of the supply chain and are accountable for long-
term value creation in the business, as measured by market share
development, category growth, innovation metrics and brand
health.
For more information about our two categories and their
innovation activities during 2005 please refer to pages 29 and 30.
Functions
Our five support functions (Finance, HR, IT, Communications and
Legal) provide value-adding business partnership, strategic support
and competitive services to the whole business (especially the
regional and category organisations). They are organised around
the model of business partners, shared services and expertise
teams.
Brands
Our Foods category manages brands in four groups:
Savoury and dressings includes sales of soups, bouillons, sauces,
snacks, mayonnaise, salad dressings and olive oil. Among the
leading brands are Knorr, Hellmann’s, Calvé, Wishbone, Amora
and Bertolli.
Spreads and cooking products includes sales of margarines,
spreads and cooking products such as liquid margarines. Our
most important brands in this group are our healthy heart Becel
and Flora ranges, together with our family brands including
Rama, Blue Band and Country Crock.
Beverages includes sales of tea, where our brands include Lipton
and Brooke Bond, weight management products, principally
Slim•Fast, and nutritionally enhanced staples sold in developing
markets, including our Annapurna and AdeS ranges.
Ice cream and frozen foods includes our sales of ice cream under
the international Heart brand, including Cornetto, Magnum,
Carte d’Or and Solero, and also Ben & Jerry’s, Breyers, Klondike
and Popsicle. Our frozen foods brands include Iglo, Birds Eye and
Findus.
In addition to these groups, our Unilever Foodsolutions business is
a global food service business providing solutions for professional
chefs and caterers. Its results are reported within those for the
groups above.
Our Home and Personal Care category manages brands in two
main groups:
In Personal Care, six global brands are the core of our business in
the deodorants, skin cleansing, daily hair care and mass-market
skin care categories – Axe, Dove, Lux, Pond’s, Rexona and Sunsilk.
Other important brands include Suave, Clear, Lifebuoy and
Vaseline, together with Signal and Close Up in oral care.
Our Home Care ranges include a series of laundry products,
including tablets as well as traditional powders and liquids for
washing by hand or machine. Tailored products including soap
bars are available for lower-income consumers. Our brands
include Comfort, Omo, Radiant, Skip, Snuggle and Surf. Our
household care products are led by our Cif and Domestos brands.
People
Number of employees
Year end in thousands 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001
Europe 49 52 55 60 71
The Americas 47 47 50 53 60
Asia Africa 110 124 129 134 134
Total 206 223 234 247 265
At Unilever our people are at the centre of everything we do. We
give priority to their professional fulfilment, their work-life balance
and their ability to contribute equally as part of a diverse
workforce.
Our people’s creativity, energy and passion drive our business.
One of our ongoing goals is to help our business leaders connect
to our people around the world and achieve a shared
understanding of our business objectives and future challenges.
In January 2006 at Unilever’s leadership forum Group Chief
Executive Patrick Cescau presented Unilever’s change agenda, a
set of common initiatives which will be adopted throughout
Unilever.
We want to attract innovative individuals who relish real-life
challenges. Questions like “Can you think of 101 new things to
do with egg yolks and oil?”, which appeared in one of our recent
recruitment ads, lie at the heart of a new and competitively
different strategy to win the battle for the world’s top talent.