NIVEA, Eucerin & Aquaphor continue to drive growth for Beiersdorf

30-Oct-2023 - Last updated on 31-Oct-2023 at 15:22 GMT

Heritage brand NIVEA has seen a revival among skin care consumers in recent years

Its trio of mass-market skin care brands saw impressive growth for the German company by the end of Q3, while sales of luxury brand La Prairie continued to decline.

In the third quarter of 2023, Beiersdorf AG reported overall Group sales of €7.3bn for the first nine months of the year (1 January – 30^th September), with organic growth of 11.2%.

Its Consumer Business Segment reached €6bn sales in this period, up by 13.6% in organic sales, mainly driven by its NIVEA (including Labello), Eucerin and Aquaphor brands.

The figures showed that flagship brand NIVEA outperformed the market with global growth of 17.5%. The brand saw double-digit growth in all regions, across all categories and all main sub-categories.

Beiersdorf said its NIVEA Luminous series in the facial skin care category had been a strong contributor to the success.

Meanwhile, Derma brands Eucerin and Aquaphor also delivered a strong performance with organic sales growth of 24.8% in the first nine months of 2023.

Beiersdorf said this was due to the global success of its Sun Care product range, continued strong growth of the e-commerce business, and a strong performance of the Derma portfolio in Latin America.

It also said that multiple product launches contributed to this success, with numerous new products featuring the active ingredient Thiamidol – which reduces hyperpigmentation and age spots – contributing significantly to the overall growth.

However, similarly to the previous quarter, La Prairie's sales were still down. For the first nine months of 2023, its sales declined by 15.8% compared to the same period last year, which the company attributed to “disruptions in the travel retail market in China and South Korea”, such as the negative impact of the ‘daigou’ business and decision to destock and reduce inventory at the retailers.

However, Beiersdorf also said there were “positive signs of recovery in other markets” for the prestige brand.

CEO of Beiersdorf Vincent Warnery said: “Our iconic brands NIVEA, Eucerin, and Aquaphor are leading the way with broad-based, double-digit growth rates, driven by impactful global and local initiatives.”

Warnery attributed the success to “the effective strategic digitalisation and globalisation of our brand portfolio” and said that the company was “additionally fuelled by strong innovations and our pipeline of sustainable products.” As a result of the strong sales, it has now raised its sales guidance for the full year.