Unilever: Consolidating footprints on Nigeria’s personal care industry

Unilever Nigeria Plc, an Anglo-Dutch multinational, is consolidating its footprints in both the personal care and foods industries in Nigeria.

With products such as Omo detergent, Vaseline, Royco, Geisha, Knorr and Blueband, among others, the firm has fed the Nigerian consumer community with quality products for 93 years.

Up to the moment, many adult Nigerians still describe Unilever as Lever Brothers. This was because Lever Brothers’ products were second to none and many Nigerians were employed or dutifully engaged along the company’s value chain before 2002 when the its name changed to Unilever Nigeria Plc.

The multinational invested €120 million Euros in the country between 2012 and 2015, according to Paul Polman, global chief executive officer of Unilever.

Polman said in 2015 when he visited the then governor-elect Akinwumi Ambode that the company had also indirectly attracted $80 million in Foreign Direct Investments (FDIs) to the Nigerian economy.

According to Polman, the investments came from value-chain investors were Unilever’s suppliers.

He said Unilever would attract more investments to the country and deliver innovative brands for Nigerian consumers.

“As we grow our business, we also want to showcase the huge business opportunities in Nigeria by inviting foreign investors to set up businesses in the country,” Polman said.

“For us, we will keep investing in Nigeria. We will also sustain efforts that attract other investors because we understand that these will create value for the economy,” he added, at a close door visit to Ambode attended by Real Sector Watch.

“Like many other countries, Nigeria isn’t without challenges.  However, there is a need for greater drive to address the bottlenecks and bureaucracies that translate into lost time. These are discouraging factors for investors,” he said.

Unilever has been hit by economic headwinds in Nigeria, which prevented it from meeting analysts’ expectations in terms of margins for a few years.

However, the company is beginning to heave a sigh of relief as its margins improved in the last quarter of 2016.

Sales reached N19.9 billion, growing by 21 percent year-on-year while profit before tax hit N2.6 billion. Similarly, profit after tax was N1.5 billion.

Unilever is a Dutch-British transnational consumer goods company co-headquartered in Rotterdam, the Netherlands and London, the United Kingdom.

 

ODINAKA ANUDU