Unilever changes and incorporates butter

Paul Polman, CEO Unilever margarine manufacturer, criticized the butter in the past, saying that fat with lactose "kills". Now that sales of products "to spread" of the company are low, he seems to see her in a different way.
In September, in a measure that the President of Unilever Foods, Antoine de Saint-Affrique, calls "fundamental turnaround" of a $ 4.8 billion deal goes through difficulties for years, Unilever added butter to Rama in Germany, the largest brand of margarine in the country. After years placing the butter as an enemy of margarine, the battle is over, he said in a conference call with investors on Dec. 5.
The surrender of Unilever arrives while the butter back into popularity, backed by new research on nutrition, cooking shows on TV and the adoption by consumers of everything that is natural. Per capita butter consumption reached its highest level in 44 years in 2012, according to data from the Government of the United States, while margarine is at its lowest level in 70 years. In Germany, sales of butter exceed those of margarine by a margin of three to one, and the gap is widening because the margarine didn't grow up in 2013, according to the company, which monitors IRI data.
"Margarine became a symbol of cheap food, processed, artificial," said Marion Nestle, Professor of nutrition at New York University. "It is an irony. Unilever has had trouble developing margarines healthy but now the spirit of the season began to harm them ". [In Brazil, Unilever owns the Becel]
For the multinational, add butter to Rama comes after sales by volume in the Division declined for six consecutive quarters. Analysts expect another drop when the company announced its results for the fourth quarter on 21 January. The company declined to comment on the matter prior to the balance sheet disclosure.. Products to "anoint" represent about 7% of the total sales of the company.
While Unilever's brands such as Flora went through problems, butter prospered. A 21% drop in price in the third quarter made it more accessible to their rivals of vegetable origin. And new research have disputed the view that the saturated fat in butter causes heart disease, said Assem Malhotra, obesity Control Group of the Royal British Academy of medical associations.
The butter benefits the consumer trend of more natural foods, with simple ingredients, encouraged by celebrity chefs and for programs such as "Heartland Table" of the Food Network, who calls her a "SAP Essentials of every dish."
Unilever's investors are losing patience with the Division of margarine and requests to sell part or all of the business, which according to estimates worth at least € 8 billion, accumulate, according the MainFirst analyst Alain-Sebastian Oberhuber.
For now, Polman supports the thread and want to include it in the list of natural products. D Conference on December 5, he said that "margarine is a natural product" because "is made of olive oil in the same way as the butter is made from milk". And added that the brand begins to regain market share, although it is still in the early stages of his plan.
This speech can be difficult to sell. "For 20 years, told us that butter is bad," said David Turner, an analyst at Mintel, "and now they put back into their margarine? For the consumer, it's a big step. "