Unilever has announced that it will report the performance of its product portfolio against at least six different government-endorsed Nutrient Profile Models (NPM) as well as its own Highest Nutritional Standards (HNS). The move follows pressure from investors for the maker of numerous leading food brands to do more to support wider efforts to tackle the obesity crisis and sell healthier products.
The company, whose brands include Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum ice cream, will publish the assessment on an annual basis and will report its performance both by volume of product and by sales revenue. Its first report will be published by October this year.
Unilever will also continue to set “stretching nutrition targets” for its portfolio, as part of its Future Foods commitments, which were published at the end of 2020. This includes time-bound targets for plant-based sales, reductions of salt, sugar and calories, and increasing the sales of healthier “positive nutrition” products.
The company stated it will update and strengthen its specific targets that expire at the end of 2022 and will consider both HNS and at least six different NPMs to determine which is the most stretching target benchmark to increase sales of healthier products in a way that maximises positive impact for global consumer health.
Catherine Howarth, Chief Executive of ShareAction, a shareholder group that pushed Unilever to make the changes, said: “A food manufacturer as large as Unilever has the power to improve the health of millions of people across the world. Responsible investors are challenging such companies to step up.
“We welcome Unilever’s new commitments. The transparency promised sets a new standard for the industry. We hope and expect that others will follow.”
Unilever stated that it will continue to engage with ShareAction and investors from the Healthy Markets Initiative as its commitments are developed and implemented.
Hanneke Faber, Unilever’s President of Foods & Refreshment, said: “We welcome the constructive dialogue we have had with ShareAction and the Healthy Markets Initiative. We share a common belief in the importance of having an ambitious long-term strategy for nutrition and health, and that companies should publish ambitious targets to deliver against. I am confident that with these new initiatives, we will set a new benchmark for nutrition transparency in our industry and accelerate our positive impact on public health.”
The company noted that a requisition, which Share Action had put forward on behalf of a number of investors for a resolution on nutrition at Unilever’s 2022 AGM in May, had now been withdrawn.
ShareAction has also been campaigning for supermarkets in the UK to do more to support moves to tackle the growing obesity crisis. After ShareAction put forward a ground-breaking health-based shareholder resolution that called on Tesco to set targets to increase the proportion of healthy products in its sales, the supermarket committed to 65% of its total sales coming from such products by 2025.
