Our Operating model
Royal Unibrew is a multi-beverage company with a decentralized organizational structure that promotes agile decision-making, tailored to meet the preferences of local consumers and customers. Our product portfolio includes beverages that can be stored at ambient temperatures, ensuring extended freshness and maximizing efficiency across our entire value chain.
Our business model is operated with a lean centralized setup, where only procurement and IT are run as global functions. This is to ensure that we reap the scale benefits from common procurement and IT across the Group, and that we monitor and operate the business through our simple and proven performance management, ERP and supporting systems. The commercial responsibility is locally anchored; thus, the commercial departments in local markets have a high degree of decision power, which secures a clear mandate and local ownership of the business development.
The foundation of our business is our strong local brand portfolios, enhanced by valuable international partnerships, as well as a highly efficient route-to-market, which in our main markets in the Nordic and Baltic countries, are based on a direct-to-customer model.
Our organization is operated with a lean centralized setup, where only procurement, IT, partnerships, and our financial shared services are run as global functions. This approach allows us to capitalize on the scale benefits of shared procurement and IT functions across the Group, while effectively monitoring and managing the business through our streamlined performance management, ERP, and supporting systems. Commercial responsibility is decentralized with local market commercial departments holding significant decision-making power. This ensures clear mandates and strong local ownership of business development.
Value chain
As a supplier of high-quality beverages, it is crucial for us to maintain a stable supply of quality ingredients and packaging materials for our beverages, such as barley, water, sugar, and cardboard. At the same time, we are committed to continuously improving the climate, environmental, and social footprint of our products. To achieve this, we work closely with our suppliers to reduce the impact of our activities. Our suppliers are also required to adhere to our Code of Conduct and ethical guidelines. Additionally, we collaborate with our customers, business partners, and local communities to promote more sustainable practices, including reuse/recycling and consumption of no/low alcohol and no/low sugar products.
We operate 20 production facilities across 10 countries, with the majority of our product range being manufactured at these locations. All beverages, regardless of category, are mainly filled in cans, kegs, glass bottles, and PET bottles using the same filling lines. Trading products, such as wine, snacks, and teas are not produced by Royal Unibrew.
On the commercial side, our multi-beverage platform yields substantial synergies, as the same salesforce can sell all our products. This allows the sales team to dedicate more time to building strong customer relationships and ensuring in store outlet execution.
Route-to-market
Our route-to-market is a key element of our operating model, ensuring that our extensive and high-quality product portfolio reaches consumers and customers efficiently. We aim to optimize product availability through our well-established distribution network while maintaining high quality standards to enhance customer satisfaction. In most of our multi-beverage markets, we operate a direct distribution model, enabling a seamless and timely flow of products from our warehouses directly to retail outlets, bars, restaurants, convenience stores, or our customers’ central warehouses.
In our multi-niche markets, we optimize the route-to-market through a combination of own direct distribution and distribution partners and wholesalers. In our International business segment, we primarily sell directly to distributors who manage in-market distribution.
Products & brands
Our multi-beverage model encompasses all relevant categories where products can be stored at room temperature, yielding scalability advantages across the value chain. Operating in both non-alcoholic and alcoholic segments, we aim to provide no/low sugar options in the non-alcoholic segment and no/low alcohol alternatives in the alcoholic segment.
Our product portfolio consists of strong local brands, many of which hold iconic status in their respective home markets. Through robust marketing initiatives that reinforce brand identities, we aim to excel across all channels and further enhance the premium quality of our overall portfolio.
In addtion to our own brands, we offer a range of well-known strong international brands, which we have secured through licensing agreements or as trading products through distribution agreements.
We aspire to attain a market-leading position within the categories we operate in. This aspiration applies to each of the markets where we are present.
Sustainable business operations
Our ambition is to lead the beverage industry with respect to climate actions and the demand for sustainable products. Our climate ambitions are manifested in our long-term net-zero target by 2040 and our short-term targets for carbon emissions. We have revised our sustainability goals to ensure they remain relevant in relation to our material impacts, risks and opportunities and support our sustainability aspirations.
Our sustainability goals, targets and actions are centered around our products and our key stakeholders: our consumers, customers, and our people.
We monitor our performance closely to ensure progress on our targets and to make timely adjustments if needed from an impact, risk and opportunity perspective.
With respect to our products, we have added goals for water, which is our most important raw material, and we are targeting regenerative agricultural practices for 50% of our major ingredients: barley, sugar, and hobs by 2030.
We have also raised the bar for packaging material and are now targeting 100% circularity for packaging material by 2030. 95% of our packing materials were either recycled, recyclable or reusable in 2024. This achievement can largely be attributed to well-established deposit return systems in our main markets.
Regarding our consumers and customers, we maintain our no/low goals linked to health and nutrition. We have, however, raised our ambition with respect marketing spend on products with a sustainability position to 60%, and we have opted for more demanding goals on customer engagement on sustainability – transitioning from being a perception-driven preferred supplier to implementing concrete sustainability plans and actions.
In relation to our people, we have sharpened the targets on safety culture, and with respect to driving a sustainability culture, we have added targets on inclusion.
Our people are the foundation of our business, and we strive to attract the most engaged, diverse and talented employees with an entrepreneurial attitude, who are empowered and eager to do better every day. We employ around 4,200 people across the Group, and we aim to create a safe work environment, where employees feel engaged and included in our dynamic, team-oriented work culture.
Embedded in our culture is the active engagement not only with the local communities around our facilities, sports clubs, and the families of our employees, but also with our brand communities in partnership with our customers, business associates, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
