Unilever strengthens partnership with distributors

This year has been one of the toughest and the most economically challenging years for the FMCG industry. High inflation, low business confidence, high interest rates, floods, bombs etc. have adversely affected business performance. Nevertheless, Unilever Sri Lanka is still tracking double digit top line growth.

The strength of their popular portfolio of brands, scale and their expertise has given Unilever a competitive advantage to win in the market place. This was the key message at the recently held Unilever Sri Lanka Annual Distributor Conference at the Heritance Kandalama Hotel where over 43 of Unilever’s most valued Distributors were felicitated and appreciated for their support.

According to the Chairman of Unilever Sri Lanka, Amal Cabraal, Unilever has two key weapons to win in challenging times; “our strong and respected brands and our people”. He further mentioned that Unilever Sri Lanka was very proud to have been ranked seventh place, up one place from last year, in the annual ‘MOST RESPECTED ENTITIES’ survey by LMD, one of the foremost business magazines in the country.

Out of Sri Lankan household expenditure, it is estimated that 40% is spent on food and beverages and about 9% is spent on home and personal care. Unilever is operating in the space of home and personal care and leads in most of the categories like laundry, hair, skin care, oral care and tea.

Customer Development Director Asanga Ranasinghe stressed the need for a shake up of our traditional ways of going to market, by building on our strengths through differentiation to stand out from the clutter.

“This requires innovation and constant reinvention of our go-to-market strategies using technology to the maximum. Above all, we must take our sales organisation (by far the best in country) to be world class”, he added.