Unilever Customers

Our network of retail customers

Our products reach shoppers through a network of customers including retailers, wholesalers and distributors. International retail customers such as Wal-Mart, Tesco, Carrefour and Metro predominate in the US and Europe, and have a growing presence in developing markets. Meanwhile, diverse distributors, wholesalers and small, independent outlets are crucial in developing and emerging markets.

Our goal is to ensure growth by becoming the partner of choice for our smaller as well as our large international customers.

Working with customers on sustainability

Many of our large international customers are now setting ambitious targets in areas such as energy use, greenhouse gas emissions and waste.

We welcome this development as a powerful driver for improving sustainability knowledge and performance – while our long-standing expertise in sustainability is helping us respond effectively. For instance, we are exploring opportunities for joint initiatives in areas such as sustainable agriculture, measuring lifecycle product impacts, and in-store shopper education programmes.

Europe

Working with the Wal-Mart Group, in 2008 we set up 'sustainability kitchens' at ASDA superstores around the UK – aiming to encourage shoppers to make environmentally friendly changes such as washing laundry at 30°C. Joint promotions with our brands resulted in significant sales increases too.

Latin America

Knorr, AdeS, Omo and Rexona are working with one of the biggest retailers in Brazil, Pão de Açúcar, to promote CEMPRE, a packaging recycling scheme for shoppers – which has so far recycled over 26 000 tonnes of packaging.

Asia

Working with SM, the largest retailer in the Philippines, we launched a reusable and recyclable shopping bag – the Green Bag – which tripled the reuse of shopping bags in one year.

Continuing our relationship with Wal-Mart

We continue to provide expert support to Wal-Mart by taking part in four of its Sustainable Value Networks (SVNs), which bring suppliers together to share best practice. We have developed a reliable way to measure how efficiently suppliers are using water in growing crops, and ran an irrigation study among Californian tomato growers, the results of which will contribute to a sustainability scorecard for Wal-Mart suppliers.

In early 2008 Wal-Mart named Unilever its 2007 Supplier of the Year for Sustainable Engagement.

Continuing our relationship with Tesco

Paul Polman, CEO, Unilever and Sir Terry Leahy, CEO, Tesco have established a joint industry group to develop a ‘common business language’ and common metrics for packaging and sustainability.