Unilever is one of the largest commodity companies in the world. In 2004, Unilever’s mission is to add vitality to life. We meet the everyday needs for nutrition, hygiene, and personal care with brands that help people feel good, look good and get more out of life.

In 2003, the global revenue of Unilever is 420 billion euros. We employ approximately 230,000 people across the globe. Our stocks are traded on London, Amsterdam, New York Stock Exchange. We have markets for our brands in 150 countries. Each day, over 150 million consumers choose our products. We are world leader in ice cream, frozen food, teas, savoury & dressing, spreads and cooking oil, scented soups, the second in toothpaste and soaps, and the third in hair care products.

It’s the unparalleled advance of competition that enables Britain & Neth Unilever to be ranked the 70^th in Fortune Global 500 Company. China is very important in Unilever’s strategy. We are committed to establish a sustainalbe development company.

The progress of development

UNIlever established its first operation in China in 1923 when Lever Brothers produced soap. In 1986 as China opened up to the outside world, Unilever re-established itself in Shanghai, setting up its first joint venture, Shanghai Lever. Since then, Unilver has set up 14 joint ventures. Unilever has introduced more than 20 brands to Chinese consumers with a full range of operations, including home and personal care, food and beverages and ice cream. The breadth of our involvement in China adds up to more than US$1billion investment, the introduction of more than 100 types of advanced technologies, and more than 3,000 local managers and employees.

Important actions

Shanghai, as the economic center of China, is not only the right place to invest, but also the ideal city to develop headquarters economy from the view of foreign strategy investors.

Asset Reorganization. In 1999, Unilever reorganized our 14 original joint ventures in China into three core businesses. They are Unilever Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Shanghai), Unilever Food (China) Co., Ltd. (headquartered in Shanghai), Wall’s (China) (headquartered in Beijing). Our main businesses are family & personal care, food and beverages, ice cream. And we gave up some subordinate businesses to focus on the main businesses. The reorganization strengthened the Unilever’s ability of investment and development, emphasized the importance of China in Unilever’s global strategy. It not only made the classification of our products more clear, unified the sales and focalized brands spread, but also decreased the consumption among the ventures, avoided competing disorderly, increased the efficiency. From the global view, it took the strategy of focusing brands and decreased the figure of the brands and keep increasing in the leading brands; from the local viewpoint, it balanced portfolio of global and local brands it offer underlines the importance Unilever places on meeting the local aspirations and needs of every community it serve.

Establishing a global supply management office. On November 4^th 2002, Unilever (China) established the 38^th global supply management office in Shanghai. Shanghai becomes the center of global purchaser and supplier. The volume that multinational companies’ purchase in Shanghai has been increased by30% every year. The first reason is that the basic facilities in Shanghai especial the transportation is quite good. Shanghai is the largest airfreight port in China, and the third largest shipping container port in the world. And the construction of deep-water port has been initialed, which makes Shanghai to be the navigation hub in Asia. The second reason is that Shanghai municipal government has improved the environment of investment greatly and offers full supply to the multinational companies. The third is that the manufacturing industry in the Yangtze Triangle is quite satisfied, which provides good industry bases and supplies to Shanghai to become the transnational purchasing center. With the internationalization of Shanghai and Unilever’s brands and sales system, the center can make great profit. Now Unilever has nearly 200 suppliers in China distributed in Shanghai, Anhui, Zhejiang, Liaoning, Jiangsu, Guangdong, Shandong, Hubei, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi provinces. We established the center in Shanghai for its good commercial atmosphere, special advantage and the supply from government.

Establishing the Research Center. Unilever values science researches and is good at making use of global resource to solve the local problems. We produce safe and price available products to meet the needs of local people. We spend approximate US$1 billion on research every year. On February 28^th 2004, Unilever established the 6^th global research and development laboratory in China. It means that the advanced international research center has been set up in Shanghai. Our purpose is to develop products, which are more suitable for Chinese customers. Initially, Unilever invested RMB166 million for the Lab, as well as allocated nearly RMB60 million towards the annual budget for Research and Development in China.  Locally employed staff will reach 150 in the first phase and employees will have unlimited access to Unilever's global scientific resources, project management methodologies and scientific networks. Research focuses on hair, skin care, laundry, oral care and packaging. There is no doubt that the establishment of the research center gives great help to the basic research in Shanghai. And it is also indicates the promise of the Unilever’s to China. Chairman of the Unilever (China) Mr. Alan Brown said: The establishment of the China research academy shows Unilever’s trust and promise in China, on the other hand, the research store and talent store in the research academy will enable Unilever to own core competition in 5 to 10 years.

Establishing region headquarters. On June the 8^th 2004, Unilever claimed that we would set up the China headquarter in Hongqiao Linkong economic district. The action fully showed the trust of Unilever’s to invest in Shanghai for a long time. Unilever just rent offices in most countries except its global headquarter and some countries which Unilever has its markets for over 50 years. The action that we established the headquarter building in Shanghai represented our trust and resolution.

Manufacture base and management center. With the entrance to WTO of China, China has already been the important part of multinational companies’ strategies. It not only reflects on the large market in China but also the role of China in the global supply chain. In order to make Unilever more competitive and make well use of the resource in the Yangtze Triangle, Unilever set up the manufacture base in Hefei and the management center in Shanghai. The distribution is quite reasonable and let us makes full use of the advantage of Shanghai. The action makes Shanghai to be an important part of our global strategy.

Locality strategy. Having discovered for several years, Unilever has formed a strategy of human resource locality, purchase locality, capital locality, image locality, research locality and brands locality.

Social responsibility.

Besides focusing on the profit, we believe it our duty to respond to the needs of the country and local community. There are two important issues: education and environment. We help build nine hope primary schools, six of which are in Qinghai province. It is not yet a market of our brands. We also found scholarship at several universities, including Fudan University and the East China University of Science and Technology. In 1998.6, Unilever Hope Star project was initialed in Beijing People Hall. The first 125 students were sponsored to attend university of full time of four years. In 2004, we started the second turn of the project, helping 75 poor college students in Anhui province. The Unilever Living Environment initiative “Clean Water and Green Mountain for China” has set out to meet the great manifold environmental challenges presented in China, a country which only 13.9% of its land is forested. From then on, nearly 60,000 people have taken part in the activity. 5 million trees have been planted. We also held lectures in all the country, which let people know more about us.

The future.

Unilever will speed up the progress of locality and train more local managers, depending on the Unilever China research center and the global resource. According to the needs of consumers, we will develop the products to add vitality to life. Being a part of modern China society, we concentrate on the society of China and promote Unilever and China’s development.