Unilever’s Best Volume Quarter in a Decade Is a Portfolio Story
Not a Marketing One
H1 2026 underlying sales growth: 4.8%. 4.2 points of it came from volume. Q2 volume growth hit 5.5%, the highest quarterly figure Unilever has posted in over ten years.
Unilever grew volume 5.5% in the second quarter of 2026. That is the company’s highest quarterly volume growth in over a decade.
The industry has spent two years telling itself there is only one lever left: price. Grocery inflation did the heavy lifting. Volume was something you defended, not something you grew. Unilever’s second quarter says otherwise. The growth came from selling more, not from charging more. And it did not come from throwing the whole portfolio at the problem. It came from something narrower.
