Evaluation of Entry into Ice cream Business - BRAC University ...

2.0 BACKGROUND OF THE ORGANIZATION
2.1 Global Unilever Group
Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of fast-moving-consumer-goods (FMCG), with 400
brands spanning 14 categories of Home, Personal Care and Foods products. In fact, 150 million times
a day people use Unilever products at key moments of their day. Unilever employs more than 206,000
people in 150 countries and had worldwide revenue of just over US$47 billion or BDT 3290 billion in
2009.
Unilever has two parent companies - Unilever NV and Unilever PLC. Unilever N.V is a public limited
company registered in the Netherlands and Unilever PLC is a public limited company registered in
England and Wales. The two parent companies, NV and PLC, together with their group companies,
operate as a single economic entity (the Unilever Group, also referred to as Unilever) with the same
board of directors. Unilever's corporate centres are in London and Rotterdam.
Unilever’s brand portfolio includes worldwide favourites: Lipton, Knorr, Dove, Axe and Vaseline. Their
portfolio is diverse in response to the varying needs of their customers across the globe. Unilever
offers world-class brands, many of which are customized for local markets. Unilever invests €1 billion
or BDT 94.4 billion every year in cutting edge research and development and has five laboratories
around the world that explore new thinking and techniques to help develop their products. The
following figure shows the portfolio of categories Unilever operates in:
Figure 1: Unilever’s Business Areas and Sales Contribution
The following are some recent highlights from Unilever’s three global divisions - Foods, Home Care
and Personal Care:
2.1.1 Home and Personal Care Divisions:
� Lux became the first mass-marketed soap when it launched in 1924. Today it achieves annual
global sales of over €1 billion
Evaluation of Entry into Ice cream Business for Bangladesh Limited 5