Beiersdorf Middle East FZCO, the newly formed Affiliate company for the Beiersdorf Group, trademark owners of the globally recognized NIVEA brands posted an excellent first year, with sales up 18 per cent over 2005.
Robert Taylor-Hughes, CEO of the Middle East operations, said: “The formation of our Dubai FZCO in Jebel Ali, previously a Media City branch office, has comfortably yielded the growth rates we had forecast in our annual business plans. Year-on-year sales results 2006 vs. 2005 for the 16 countries under our control are higher by 18 per cent, well in excess of regional market growth of 10 per cent in the Cosmetics & Toiletries categories in which we operate. A more important measure is quality of sales or market shares. During the fiscal year we dropped no share positions and gained another four no.1 market positions across our region, taking the total count of no.1 & no.2 positions in our categories to 32. Significant gains were made in the 2006 focus categories of deodorant & face care. Like-for-like comparisons show the Beiersdorf business model delivers much better quality & value for its consumers and ROI for its trade partners.”
The latest AC Nielsen report (to Oct. 06), supports this, confirming Beiersdorf as having the largest market share value gains, well in excess of competition. “The results are particularly encouraging for our dynamic multi-cultural team as we operate under significant pressure from our competitors particularly in the form of advertising muscle and the way competitors buy market share volume in the form of over-discounting and over promotion. Operating under pressure is something we train our team to recognize and to understand that ‘clear thinking’ is the most productive way to deal with it. Headcount for our operations will increase by a further 25% in 2007 to insure we have the correct workload / HR capacity ratios, delivering further expertise and in-market support for our trade partners,” he added.
“Bringing supply chain to the region in the form of our Jebel Ali hub / Agility alliance, means we are closer to our trade partners & customers, offering better replenishment & forecasting ability but more importantly offering more flexibility in catering for the market dynamics.
‘This has brought significant early advantage in 2006, but we will see the major gains in 2007 when we have a full trading year under the new structure. Consumers will be at the heart of all our regional activities for 2007, we have some nice surprises in store particularly in true state-of-the-art cosmetic innovations, researched by more than 300 full-time scientists at our R&D facility in Germany. These star projects will be supported by more than 3 times our previous marketing budget constraints, gained as results of the new company structure and better media buying & planning rates for the fiscal year. We therefore expect even higher growth rates and market share gains for 2007.”
Preliminary annual group sales for 2006 were released at the Annual Middle East conference held in Beijing, China in January. Group sales exceeded €5.1bn, an increase of 7.3% vs. 2005 and ahead of plan.
