Unilever Goes for Smaller Packages as Europeans, Bulgarians Live on Smaller Budgets

Unilever has begun offering smaller, less expensive packages so as not to put too great a strain on increasingly limited budgets. Photo by DPA

Food and cosmetics giant Unilever, known in Bulgaria not only for its traditional products, but also as the owner of popular Darko ice cream, is changing its strategy to respond to European customers' thinner wallets.

"Poverty is returning to Europe," Jan Zijderveld, Unilever's top manager in Europe, told the Financial Times Deutschland on Monday.

As a result, the company has begun offering smaller, less expensive packages so as not to put too great a strain on increasingly limited budgets. It is, Zijderveld noted to the paper, a strategy the company learned by doing business in the developing countries of Asia.

"In Indonesia, we sell tiny packages of shampoo for two to three cents and still earn decent money," he says. "We know how to do it, but in the European boom years prior to the crisis we forgot."

Unilever is best known through the myriad popular brands it owns, including Knorr instant soups, Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Lipton teas, Hellmann's mayonnaise and many more. But it also owns several local brands that are only known regionally.

In Greece, for instance, the company sells low-priced olive oil and tea under a local brand and also offers tiny packages of mashed potatoes or mayonnaise.

In Spain, the company sells small packages of washing powder good for only five loads of laundry.

In Bulgaria, Unilever Central and Eastern Europe acquired Darko, the second largest distributor and producer of ice cream in the country, in the summer of last year.

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