Consumer goods major Unilever has initiated plans to offshore several of its back office functions to India and Eastern Europe.

The move is likely to result in the loss of nearly 2,500 jobs across Europe.

The company has asked Accenture and IBM to examine the possibility of taking on its finance, human resources and IT operations and moving them to Eastern Europe and India.

In Britain, such tasks are carried out at Crawley, Sussex, and Walton-on-Thames and Kingston-upon-Thames, both Surrey, although a spokesman said potential redundancies will run to "only handfuls".

The spokesman told the media: "We are in the due diligence period and will make a decision in a few months."

The review forms part of the One Unilever campaign to cut out layers of management.

Reports in Germany claimed the IT function would start to be outsourced from early 2006, while the remaining plans may be implemented between the middle of 2006 and 2007.

The spokesman declined to comment on potential job losses, adding: "We have to explore all sorts of options, ranging from the retention of all these roles at the one end to outsourcing it all at the other. We have not yet decided."