Unilever leaves Orkla behind

Unilever South Central Europe (USCE), a division of the Unilever food giant, increased its market share on the margarine segment by over 9% during the February 2007-2008 period. According to data from Nielsen market research company, cited by Unilever, the company reached a 59.8% average market share in the mentioned period, compared with 50.6% in 2006. Therefore, Unilever made a leap ahead of its sole competitor on the local market, Orkla Foods Romania, the division of the Norwegian giant Orkla. Until 2007, the market shares held by the two players on the margarine market were very similar. While Unilever held an over 50% market share in terms of value, Orkla held over 50% in terms of volume (private labels excluded) in January-February of 2007, according to data from research company MEMRB, previously cited by representatives of Orkla Foods Romania, with the most dynamic brands being Wiesana and Unirea. Orkla Foods representatives had not released their own data on margarine market shares by the time this issue was ready for print, but a fact worth mentioning is that the two multinationals used data from different research companies for 2007 results, i.e. Nielsen (Unilever) and MEMRB (Orkla).