Unilever, the world's second-largest consumer goods maker, plans to significantly increase its investment in Hefei, a medium-sized city in east China's Anhui Province.

"We will invest 700 million yuan (103 million U.S. dollars) in our production base in Hefei to boost output value to 10 billion yuan in five years," said Zeng Xiwen, vice president of Unilever's Greater China region,last week.

Zeng said the company has relocated seven factories from Shanghai and Guangdong, among China's first-tier cities in terms of their overall economic power, to the second-tier Hefei, taking into consideration of lower production costs and availability of land use for business expansion.

The Unilever Industrial Zone, located in the Economic and Technological Development Zone of Hefei, capital of Anhui, has become one of Unilever's four major global production bases. It reported an output value of 1 billion yuan in March alone, according to Zeng.