Unilever, meanwhile, has been among a cohort of food majors to have started to implement zero-based budgeting in an attempt to manage costs and boost profits. The company had earmarked EUR1bn in savings by 2018 from the organisational changes through what was the new functional models but is now the Connected 4 Growth programme, plus from its implementation of zero-based budgeting. Pitkethly said moves to extend zero-based budgeting to Unilever's supply chain and to a "wave of smaller countries" mean the company now expects those savings to grow to "more than EUR1bn" by 2019.