Because we know flavor… we're the clear market leader and we're driving category growth. Our brands have a strong leading share - whether it is McCormick in the United States, Schwartz in the United Kingdom, Ducros in France or our brands in other key markets.

In addition to providing our customers with the leading retail brand, we are often their source for store-branded products.

Maintaining market leadership requires acting like a leader by bringing innovation, news and excitement to the consumer. In the United States, the United Kingdom and France, we restaged our entire line of seasoning mixes with more appealing packaging, more effective merchandising and some exciting new products. We are following that with a comprehensive relaunch of our U.S. spice and seasoning line in 2006. It has been nearly 20 years since we had such a significant and comprehensive initiative behind these products, and we believe it will reenergize and enhance consumer demand.

Our increased advertising over recent years continues to have impact. In 2005, we focused our U.S. advertising on grinders, Grill Mates^® and Zatarain's^®. We also developed ways to better meet the needs of Hispanic consumers, among whom we are the top brand in our category. With advertising and the launch of new products, we increased sales of Hispanic-targeted products by 20% in 2005.

With better merchandising, new products and improved packaging, we are driving category growth. In 2005, our primary category in the United States rose 3%. In the United Kingdom the increase was 3%, in Canada it was 4% and in Australia the category increased 6%.