Unilever 2008 Annual Report Download - page 24

About Unilever continued
Unilever Annual Report and Accounts 2008 21
Report of the Directors
Our definition of D&E markets includes all countries in Latin
America, Central & Eastern Europe, Africa and Asia, except Japan,
Korea, Australia and New Zealand. In 2008, the turnover in these
markets represented 47% of the turnover of the Group.
Our D&E strategy aims to increase the penetration and
consumption of our categories with D&E consumers at all income
levels and to trade consumers up to higher added value products
as needs change with rising incomes. We have an outstanding
geographic footprint in D&E markets. Our focus is to maintain
and develop our leading category and brand positions in our D&E
strongholds, such as Brazil, India, South Africa and Indonesia,
whilst simultaneously investing aggressively for growth to build up
new brand and category positions in countries that present
important new growth opportunities, notably China and Russia.
In the last decade we have strengthened our brand portfolio, with
the top 25 brands now collectively contributing 73% of our
global turnover. We now have 13 brands with a turnover of
€1 billion or more, as the Axe/Lynx men’s care brand surpassed
this milestone in 2008.
We also monitor the development of our brands through
independent market information that gives us insights into our
leading positions versus our direct competitors. In our section on
Operating environment on page 22 we indicate the product areas
in which we have leading or key strategic positions.
Key indicators – people and sustainability
Unilever has for many years recognised the significance of social
and environmental issues as a critical dimension of its operations,
and has established many indicators to track its performance in
these areas.
We regard safety as an essential element of a successful and
sustainable business and take seriously our responsibility to
provide a safe workplace. We aim to improve continuously the
health, safety and well-being of everyone working for or on
behalf of Unilever. A key measure of our progress in this area is
our total recordable accident frequency rate, which counts all
workplace accidents except those requiring only simple first aid
treatment. For details please refer to page 13.
We are committed to meeting the needs of customers and
consumers in an environmentally sound and sustainable manner,
through continuous improvement in environmental performance
in all our activities. We exercise the same concern for the
environment wherever we operate and aim to reduce the
environmental footprint of our business and brands.
The environmental measures that we regard as the most
significant in relation to our business are those relating to the
amounts of CO2from energy that we produce, the water that we
consume as part of our production processes, and the amount of
waste that we generate. For further details please refer to
page 16.
The table below shows the results for the last three years.
2008 2007 2006
Total recordable accident frequency rate
per 100 000 hours 0.21 0.26 0.33
CO2from energy per tonne of
production (kg) 146.77 149.18 164.59
Water per tonne of production (m3)2.96 3.05 3.29
Total waste per tonne of production (kg) 7.89 7.56 7.46
Data for 2008 is preliminary. It will be independently assured and
reported in our online Sustainable Development Report 2008 at
www.unilever.com/sustainability For previous years, the data has
been assured. The type of assurance undertaken has been limited
to enquiries of company personnel and analytical procedures
together with review on a sample basis of the operation of
processes relating to performance data noted in the table above.
Assurance of this nature is substantially less in scope than a
financial audit and does not include detailed sample testing of
source data, processes or internal controls. None of the assurance
services in this area is provided by Unilever’s external financial
auditors.
On pages 9 to 11 of this report we give examples of the ways in
which our brands are addressing consumers’ social and
environmental concerns. A comprehensive review of Unilever’s
social and environmental performance can be found in our annual
Sustainable Development Report, available online at
www.unilever.com/sustainability Our online Report will contain
updated and independently assured results for 2008 for the
measures above, as well as trend information that demonstrates
our performance over the longer term.
Ten-year trends in many of the measures described above,
together with a range of other indicators, are included in the
document entitled ‘Unilever Charts’ which can be found on our
website at
www.unilever.com/investorrelations/annual_reports
Organisation
Unilever’s organisation comprises regions, categories and
functions.
During 2008, we reorganised the management of our regions so
that our operations in Central & Eastern Europe were managed
together with those in Asia and Africa, whereas they had
previously been managed with those in Western Europe. This
change reflects our strategic focus on the developing world and
the fact that these markets share many common characteristics.
Our regions have profit responsibility for the local go-to-market
operations in their geographic territory. The focus is primarily to
build and develop relationships with customers, to develop the
regional supply chain to deliver customer service and asset
productivity, and to deploy brands and innovations effectively,
focused on excellent execution in the market place. The
performance of the regions is measured in terms of in-year
financial results, customer service levels and market positions.