Report & accounts 2002 in full - Unilever

10 About Unilever
Home & Personal Care
Home care and professional cleaning
We are one of the global leaders in the domestic home care
market. Our products have been developed to meet the
diverse requirements of consumers to clean and care for
their homes and clothes. In laundry, they include tablets for
convenience, traditional powders and liquids for soaking,
washing by hand and by machine. In developing and
emerging markets, tailored products, including soap bars,
are available for lower income consumers. In household
care our products are designed to tackle most cleaning
and hygiene needs around the home.
Our home care brands are available in over 100 countries,
many of them holding leading market positions. These
brands include Omo, Surf, Looks Great, Snuggle, Comfort,
Cif and Domestos.
In May 2002, we sold DiverseyLever, our institutional
and industrial cleaning business, to Johnson Professional.
Unilever retains a one-third equity stake in the combined
JohnsonDiversey business, with an option to exit the
business from 2007.
Personal care
We are one of the world leaders in skin and hair care,
deodorants and anti-perspirants. In skin care our global
brands include Lux, Dove and Pond’s. Rexona, Axe and
Dove are the key brands in deodorants and anti-perspirants.
Hair products are available under the Sunsilk, Dove and
Suave brands.
We also have an important market share in oral care, with
products sold widely, predominantly under the Signal brand.
Our Prestige fragrance business is one of the world’s largest.
We sell a number of fragrances under the Calvin Klein
name, including Obsession, Eternity and Truth. In addition,
in recent years cK one and Crave have been introduced to
appeal to the youth market. The designer fragrance brands
Cerruti, Lagerfeld, Chloé and Valentino, together with
Nautica, Vera Wang and BCBG fragrance, complete our
extensive portfolio.
Other operations
To support our consumer brands, we own both tea
plantations in India, Kenya and Tanzania and palm oil
plantations in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Côte
d’Ivoire and Ghana.
Corporate venture activities
As announced on 30 September 2002, we are to invest
€170 million in building business opportunities that fit our
core business interests in Foods and Home & Personal Care.
Of this, as sponsor and lead investor, we have committed
€100 million to the newly created Langholm Capital
Partners Fund. This fund will focus on acquiring majority
or influential minority stakes in private UK and continental
European companies valued between €20 million and
€200 million and demonstrating above-average mediumterm
growth prospects. In addition, up to €70 million will
Unilever Annual Report & Accounts and Form 20-F 2002
be invested over three years in two newly developed
venture funds of our own, Unilever Ventures and Unilever
Technology Ventures. The former will act as an early stage
business development fund; the latter, based in California,
will invest in technology-based funds and start-up
companies.
Technology and innovation
To support our Path to Growth strategy we continued to
focus research and development on fewer, global projects
to reinforce our leading brands. We established a network
of Global Innovation Centres to develop the brands and to
accelerate their growth across sectors and regions.
In 2002, we spent €1 166 million (2001: €1 178 million;
2000: €1 187 million) on research and development – 2.4%
of our turnover. We introduced new ways of working to
further align research and development with business needs
and improve the quality and speed of innovation. For
example, we linked our R&D strategy more closely with
divisional strategic plans and R&D was represented on new
global brand teams.
These changes led to some significant developments as we
focused on fewer global projects. In Home & Personal Care,
these included a single fabric conditioner ingredient for
Comfort and Snuggle, giving us greater purchasing power
for raw materials and reducing manufacturing costs. We
also developed the Dove ultra moisturising bar and rolled
out Dove Moisturising Shampoo and Conditioner in Europe,
Asia and Latin America. The division also launched a new
Axe formulation, providing superior odour protection and,
in the anti-ageing market, we launched the clinically
superior Pond’s Dramatic Results.
Foods also delivered a series of new innovations. A Knorr
snack range was introduced in Latin America, providing
affordable, nutritious products for low-income consumers.
In the UK, a Knorr healthy eating range was brought to the
consumer under the name Knorr Vie. Lipton launched a
new, refreshing lemonade in the US and a new tea drink,
called Sparkle, in Japan. Slim •Fast introduced cereal bars in
the US, while under the Bertolli brand new liquid margarines
and pasta sauces were launched in Europe.
In total, Unilever filed 450 new patent applications. While
some innovations made a significant contribution in 2002
the benefits of others will be felt during 2003.