Consumer good giant Unilever have announced stronger than expected sales growth for the first quarter of 2019.

The Anglo-Dutch company, who manufacture ice cream at their Corinium Avenue base in Barnwood, saw underlying sales grow by 3.1 per cent in the first three months of the year.

In their trading update released today, Unilever said that Ice cream sales "had a strong start to the year."

"Magnum was helped by innovations such as a new white chocolate and cookie variant," it added.

Overall revenue for the period came in at €12.4billion with sales in emerging markets contributing the significant factor in that growth.

Of that growth, 1.9 per cent came from price rises, with the other 1.2 per cent coming from an increase in volume sales.

Unilever produce a huge catalogue of consumer products from Ben and Jerry's ice cream to Persil washing powder.

Overall turnover fell by 1.6 per cent, due to the disposal of the spreads sector of the business to US based KKR late in 2017 for €6.8billion.

Unilever CEO Alan Jope said: "We have delivered a solid start that keeps us on track for our full year expectations.

"Growth was led by emerging markets and was balanced between volume and price. Accelerating growth is our number one priority.

We saw good performance in key growth channels including out of home and e-commerce and benefited from stronger global innovations and faster and more relevant local innovation.

"The acquisitions we have made since 2015 collectively grew double-digit in the first quarter. With the leadership changes announced in March, we are building the right team to drive our growth agenda.

"For the full year we continue to expect underlying sales growth to be in the lower half of our multi-year 3 per cent - 5 per cent range, an improvement in underlying operating margin that keeps us on track for the 2020 target and another year of strong free cash flow."