Broadcast 24th March 2000

Only 400 brands will be promoted now - the others will be axed or allowed to die slowly. When asked which brands would be axed, Unilever's Chairman Niall Fitzgerald, joked he couldn't remember them.

Brands definitely surviving include Magnum and Cornetto ice cream, Lipton's and Brooke Bond tea together with Dove skincare. Of course, fewer brands means fewer factories and fewer jobs.

Over the next five years, 25,000 workers will go: that is ten per cent of the total, and 100 of Unilever's 750 manufacturing sites around the world will be closed or sold. It is a pretty radical plan, as our correspondent Andrew Walker heard from the boss himself, Unilever Chairman Niall Fitzgerald.

"We are going to focus all of our resource behind those brands which are real winners, and which can drive much faster growth. We've seen it elsewhere. We have had trials for this approach over the last two years in our Home and Personal Care business in Europe and in Brazil. In both cases, we have seen a significant pick-up in the growth-rates and indeed, significant increase in margins.

I think it is an entirely logical point we have reached. We first of all focus the industries. Unilever used to be a very diversified business and we focussed it down on Detergents, Personal Care, Chemicals and Food. We then simplified it even further over the last few years and we disposed of our chemicals business. And it became clear that move had freed up the position whereby we could now focus on the brands."

It is the brands that drive the business. Niall Fitzgerald

Mr Fitzgerald then went on to explain how the internet was an increasing feature in Unilever’s strategy:

"There are two broad areas where we think it will have great impact. One is described as 'business to business'. That will have particular impact on our supply chain, where we buy and procure materials. As we move to regional and global buying, enabled by the internet, we would expect that to save a billion pounds over the next three years. As part of the further rationalisation of our supply chain in terms of factories, I would expect that that will also be enabled in part by the internet, enabled to transfer knowledge and information and logistical detail very fast.

The other is 'business to consumer'. There are two elements to that. One is the internet allows you to have a much more intimate relationship with individual consumers, learn more about them, get faster feedback from them with regard to how they are seeing your products and your innovations."

The biggest question mark in our area, is whether we will sell a lot of products via the internet. Niall Fitzgerald.