Unilever announced its results for the first quarter of 2016 showing underlying sales growth of 4.7%, with emerging markets up by 8.3%.
Although underlying volume grew by 2.6% and pricing was up 2.0%, turnover declined 2.0% to €12.5bn, including a negative currency impact of 7.1%.
Good growth was seen in savoury and was led by cooking products in emerging markets and by innovations around 'naturalness', such as Knorr Mealmakers with 100% natural ingredients in Europe.
Hellmann’s drove strong growth in dressings driven by a new ‘Real’ campaign, the success of the convenient squeeze packaging with proprietary easy-out technology, and the launch of Carefully Crafted and Organic variants.
The Baking, Cooking & Spreads unit repositioned Flora in the UK with a campaign that highlights its plant-based health credentials, and introduces a dairy-free variant. Sales in spreads declined as a result of the continued market contraction in developed countries.
CEO Paul Polman said, “The first quarter demonstrates a strong volume-driven performance, following on from a good delivery in 2015. We are maintaining momentum despite a tougher external environment, with all four categories gaining market share. This broad-based growth, including 8% in emerging markets, shows the validity of our strategy, active portfolio management and a step-up in innovation.
“With markets remaining volatile, we continue to focus on driving agility and resilience in our business through the key programmes which we set out at the end of last year: net revenue management, zero based budgeting and the next stage in our continued organisational transformation.
'This will position us well to deliver another year of volume-driven growth ahead of our markets, steady improvement in core operating margin and strong cash flow. These underpin sustained long-term value creation for our shareholders.”