What is a company's most valuable business asset? Is it its manufacturing plant, its information system or perhaps a research laboratory? Or is it consumers' confidence in the quality and integrity of their products and services? DiverseyLever believes this is so and is launching a new management concept, called 'Hygieneomics', to help companies ensure food safety and hygiene, and to maintain consumers' trust in their brands.

DiverseyLever, Unilever's subsidiary specialising in industrial and institutional hygiene and cleaning, is pioneering a new management discipline which takes a proactive approach to improving hygiene and food safety. Known as 'Hygieneomics', this new discipline aims to cut through the complexity of overlapping management processes and multiple hygiene standards to provide businesses with a fully integrated approach which can be measured and compared.

Around the world, hygiene incidents highlight the vital role of effective management in protecting consumers and maintaining their confidence in a brand's reputation. The Hygieneomic approach allows managers to get to grips with this vital, but often fragmented area in business. It will enable the establishment of a hygiene management programme that stretches 'from farm to fork' thus reducing hygiene-related risks to consumers, brands and business as a whole.

The organisations most affected and likely to benefit from Hygieneomics are the food processing (e.g. meat, beverages, dairy, frozen foods, prepared meals, breweries, baby foods) and food service industries (e.g. fast food restaurants, workplace and airline catering, supermarkets, hotels, hospitals).

Many factors blend together to make the time ripe for the introduction of Hygieneomics:- the complexity of the global food chain when an average meal can contain ingredients from five countries, and reaching a point when governments and regulatory bodies can no longer cope; the increase in tourism and international business travel leading to consumer expectation of uniform hygiene and food safety standards around the world; increased susceptibility to food borne infections of several population groups, e.g. people with lower immunity due to illness and medical treatment, the young and the elderly. Above all, consumer demand for reassurance, protection and information continues to mount. In a recent survey in the US, food safety at 58% came second only to crime as a priority issue.

As hygiene is becoming a key ingredient in maintaining consumer confidence in branded products and services, it is increasingly seen as a key priority amongst senior management. Therefore, instead of being regarded as a middle management or specialist responsibility, often on a plant level, questions of how best to tackle hygiene are now escalating up the management ladder to corporate boardrooms.

Even so, a recent poll conducted amongst 3,500 of the world's largest organisations revealed that answers to the questions, 'Who in your company is responsible for hygiene at board level?', produced over 120 job titles, most of them middle managers or hygiene specialists - a fact which indicates that the issue of hygiene and food safety still has some way to go before being naturally included on board agendas. Hygieneomics will help in this process.

In assuming greater responsibility for maintaing consumers' confidence in their company's brands, top management face a confusing maze of regulations and standards related to food safety and hygiene.

An international review in 52 countries showed that there are in excess of 800 standards in place. This poses a management challenge to food producers who in most cases source their raw-materials from numerous countries, and market their finished products across the world. Securing food safety and maintaining consistent hygiene standards under these circumstances is difficult.

More Effective Control over a Complex Situation

The situation has been made worse by the fact that even large food producers or food service companies do not have one single discipline or agreed approach to food safety and hygiene management.

Total Quality Management, Total Production Management and HACCP on their own fail to address the issues of food safety and hygiene comprehensively throughout the whole sourcing, manufacturing and distribution process. Therefore senior managers have struggled to get effective control of a situation that is, in reality, very complex and fragmented.

In response to these rapidly emerging business pressures, particularly among internationally active food producing and food service companies, DiverseyLever, one of the world's leading commercial cleaning and hygiene specialists, has pioneered the business concept of Hygieneomics. It is a new management discipline aimed at integrating all aspects of management critical to hygiene and food safety.

Instrumental in the development of the 'hygieneomic approach' has been Dr Graeme Armstrong, Senior Vice President, Research and Development at DiverseyLever. "The challenge," he says "is in the multitude of people and processes involved. We needed a focal point, a single discipline to ensure the required high standard of hygiene and food safety through the whole supply and distributive chain. Without an integrated system, hygiene and food safety will fail at the weakest link in the chain, and expose the company and its brands. This is what Hygieneomics will remedy if applied in a disciplined manner."

In detail Hygieneomics starts with the creation of an underpinning corporate policy and by adopting specific standards throughout the full supply chain. This is followed by the unification of hitherto fragmented management procedures into one cohesive whole from farm to fork.

Although the process re-engineering aspect of Hygienenomics is important, the business cultural element is of equal importance. Without all employees' and management's full and continued support, maintaining standards is impossible.

Hygieneomics works from initial risk analysis through management systems, standards, auditing, technical services, education, training, communication and brand protection and - if all else fails -crisis management, all locking together to maximise performance against the set standards and to minimise business risks.

Early experiences from the application of the Hygieneomic approach so far indicate that when allied to strong corporate cultures supporting hygiene and food safety, integrated management systems will provide the basis for industry to gain the trust of customers and thus turn this challenging area into a business opportunity.

An endorsement comes from Professor Mike Olsen, Director of Research at the International Hotel and Restaurant Association. "Today," he says "partly because of the food incidents which have hit the headlines, consumers are better informed than ever and exercise greater discrimination when it comes to choosing where or what they eat. As a result organisations, whether a hospital, fast food outlet or food manufacturer, must be correspondingly more vigilant, if they are to give the public the confidence and peace of mind which will make them react positively towards their brands."

When developing the Hygieneomics concept DiverseyLever has co-operated with academics, who have conducted studies focusing on the economic repercussions of failures in hygiene and food safety.

Two recent studies, one carried out by Professor Roland Rust of Vanderbilt University in Nashville and the other at Oxford University both examine the effect a food hygiene or safety incident can have on shareholder value. In both cases share performance was tracked from the day of incident and at intervals during the next six months. Groups of peer companies were also tracked as a control so that variations could be identified.

The studies reveal contrasting fortunes. Professor Rust identified those food and beverage companies which contributed at least 20% to the holding company's sales and looked at their share performance on five different occasions: before the recall, at time of recall, and at intervals during the six months after the recall.

Two examples demonstrate vividly the differing outcomes. A national fast food chain in the US found itself 46% down in shareholder value six months after a contamination incident. A large soft drinks manufacturer emerged with shares valued 55% higher six months after its incident.

In a separate study Dr Roy Knight of Templeton College, Oxford and Deborah Pretty of Christ Church, Oxford showed that firms affected by food safety and hygiene related catastrophes fall into two distinct groups - 'recoverers' and 'non-recoverers'.

They found that amongst 'recoverers' the initial loss of shareholder value was shown to be approximately 5% and amongst 'non-recoverers' 11%. The latter were, however, shown to have suffered a net cumulative reduction in value of almost 15% up to one year after the event.

Again the contrasts in handling the crises successfully are striking. A mineral water brand had lost approximately 35% of its shareholder value six months after an incident, whereas a lager brand had regained its value and in fact increased it some 20% after six months.

Why would some companies recover so much better than others, even beyond their pre-incident value? This is attributed to management's ability to cope with the aftermath of an incident. It is placed in the spotlight and has the opportunity to demonstrate its skill in limiting damage, identifying the source of the problem and explaining what has happened and the corrective measures taken.

Crucial to a positive outcome is the management's ability to orchestrate an immediate, sustained and positive response to crisis. This 'orchestration' of a positive reaction is what the Hygieneomic approach enables companies to do, but perhaps even more importantly it helps minimise risks of such incidents happening in the first place.

Hygieneomic is a trademark

Notes to Editors:

Research by Professor Rust

The objective of the Owen Vanderbilt Service Marketing project is to determine the effect that catastrophic events caused by lapses in hygiene and food safety, have on the shareholder value of food and beverage companies. A financial model was developed to quantify the company-specific, industry, and market effects and to measure the outcome by comparing the "incident" company with a peer group of companies within the same industry.

Company risk is accounted for by including the beta formulas* of each 'incident' and 'control' company. Market effects are measured by adding the returns of the S&P 500 index** to the model to account for market returns over the time period in question.

Data were captured by recording the share price at various time intervals (two weeks before the incident, day of announcement, two weeks after, two months after and six months after). The model measures the cumulative abnormal returns for each "incident" company relative to its "control" group. The change illustrates a company's loss in market value due to the incident after the time period in question.

*- In this context, the beta is the standard risk measure for

individual securities.

** Standard & Poor is the world's leading provider of rating

services, among them preferred stocks.

Research by Dr Rory Knight and Ms Deborah Pretty

The study is called 'The impact of Catastrophes on Shareholder Value.' It is published by Templeton College, Oxford.

Tel: +44 1865 422515

Fax: +44 1865 422501

Email: dave.hall@templeton.oxford.ac.uk

DiverseyLever is one of the world's leading commercial cleaning and hygiene specialists. It is an autonomous business group within Unilever. On 13th January the company annoounced it was starting a new business, DiverseyLever Consulting. The new company offers consumer and brand protection through integrated management systems which involve the combination of strategic consulting, risk assessment, benchmarking and providing hygiene solutions. DiverseyLever Consulting will deliver this integrated service in asssociation with SGS, Checkmate International, Zurich Financial Services and Merck KgaA.

DiverseyLever operates in more than 100 countries and employs approximately 13,000 people. The bulk of the company's business derives from customers in industries which include, restaurants and hotels, quick service establishments, factories, hospitals, schools, laundries, dairies, breweries, food processors, pharmaceutical manufacturers and beverage producers. Skilled consultants offer advice and recommendations based on years of experience in the field and a detailed knowledge of each customer's operations. Dedicated to a holistic approach to hygiene and food safety, they bring to each project all their expertise in legislative and regulatory issues, customer requirements and environmental care. Significant in-country presence, supported by sophisticated global knowledge and technology exchange processes make DiverseyLever a true 'multi-local multinational'.

For further information please contact:

Linda Beadle or Claire Perry

Anderson & Lembke,

42 Great Russell Street,

London WC1B 3PH

Telephone: 00 44 (0) 171 291 0000

Fax: 00 44 (0) 171 323 1056

Email: judith@anderson-lembke.co.uk