Unilever

• 1. Introduction

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  Unilever, the British multinational headquartered in London, sells its products in over 190 countries and holds the distinction of being the largest producer of soap in the world. That reach is staggering to contemplate. A tube of toothpaste in a Mumbai bathroom, a bottle of Dove shampoo in a Chicago shower, a tub of Knorr stock cubes in a Lagos kitchen - all trace back to a single corporate parent born from a merger in 1930. The questions worth asking are how a company built on margarine and soap grew to touch so many corners of daily life, what controversies have followed that expansion, and what it means for the world's shelves when one company decides to change course.

• 2. The 1930 Marriage

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  Margarine Unie, a Dutch producer of margarine, and Lever Brothers, a British soap maker, formally merged in 1930. The name Unilever was itself a blend of the two companies' names, a tidy signal of what the new entity was trying to accomplish. Within that same decade, the company moved into Africa and Latin America, launching new ventures and acquiring the United Africa Company, which had been created from the merger of the African & Eastern Trade Corporation and the Royal Niger Company. That older company had overseen British trade interests in present-day Nigeria during the colonial era, and absorbing it planted Unilever deep in territory where its ambitions would grow for generations. When the Nazi occupation of Europe during the Second World War made reinvestment on the continent impossible, Unilever pivoted to acquisitions in the United Kingdom and the United States instead, picking up T. J. Lipton in 1943, a majority stake in Frosted Foods (owner of the Birds Eye brand in the United Kingdom) that same year, and Pepsodent in 1944.

• 3. Oil, Fat, and Diversification

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  By the mid-1960s, laundry soap and edible fats still contributed around half of Unilever's corporate profits. That concentration made the company vulnerable. A stagnant market for yellow fats, covering butter and margarine and similar products, and rising competition in detergents from Procter & Gamble forced Unilever's hand. The company began diversifying deliberately. It acquired Brooke Bond, maker of PG Tips tea, in 1984 for £390 million, its first successful hostile takeover. In 1978, it had already paid $487 million for National Starch, a transaction that was at that point the largest ever foreign acquisition of a US company. By the end of the 1970s, the company had built a 30 percent share of the Western European ice cream market through acquisitions alone. In 1993, adding Breyers from Kraft made Unilever the largest ice cream manufacturer in the United States. The shape of the company was shifting from a maker of household staples into something far more sprawling, spanning soaps, teas, frozen foods, ice cream, and personal care products all at once.

• 4. The Ben and Jerry's Fault Line

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  Ben & Jerry's joined Unilever in 2000 as part of a £1.63 billion acquisition that also brought in SlimFast and the boutique mustard retailer Maille. The ice cream brand came with an independent board of directors and a tradition of political outspokenness, and those two facts eventually produced a visible rupture. In July 2021, Ben & Jerry's announced plans to end sales in Occupied Palestinian Territory. Board chair Anuradha Mittal confirmed the board had resolved to end sales there as early as July 2020, but the CEO appointed by Unilever in 2018 had never carried out the resolution. Florida governor Ron DeSantis placed Unilever on a list of companies that boycott Israel in August 2021. Arizona committed to divest from Unilever entirely by the 21st of September 2021. New Jersey gave Unilever 90 days' notice of divestment action the same month, and New York and Illinois took similar steps. Unilever resolved the standoff in June 2022 by selling its Ben & Jerry's division in Israel to American Quality Products, the existing licensee. Ben & Jerry's responded that same day on social media, stating it continued to believe the sale was inconsistent with its values. In 2024, Ben & Jerry's started legal action against Unilever, and in October 2025 co-founder Ben Cohen claimed Unilever had blocked the company from releasing a watermelon flavour in support of Palestine. Ben & Jerry's was eventually divested as part of Unilever's ice cream spin-off in late 2025.

• 5. Controversies and Costs

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  In 2001, a mercury thermometer factory operated by Unilever's Indian subsidiary in the South Indian hilltown of Kodaikanal was shut down by state regulators after the company was caught dumping toxic mercury waste in a densely populated area. By the company's own admission, more than 2 tonnes of mercury were discharged into Kodaikanal's environment. A 2011 Government of India study found that many workers suffered illnesses caused by workplace exposure to mercury. Unilever reached an out-of-court settlement in March 2016 with 591 former workers who had sued over knowing exposure to the toxic element; the settlement amount was not disclosed. In April 2011, the European Commission fined Unilever €104 million for participating in a price-fixing cartel for washing powder alongside Procter & Gamble and Henkel. In 2019, security forces hired by Unilever attacked workers peacefully picketing at a facility in Durban, South Africa, shooting them with rubber bullets and paintballs and pepper-spraying them while they tried to reach their cars; four workers were seriously injured. Unilever was also cited in 2019 as one of the top ten global plastic polluters, producing 6.4 billion unrecyclable plastic sachets per year. A Reuters investigation in June 2022 revealed the company had lobbied governments in India and the Philippines to stop legislation that would have banned single-use sachets, even after pledging in 2020 to phase them out.

• 6. Reshaping the Portfolio

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  Paul Polman served as CEO for ten years starting in 2009, and it was under his leadership that Unilever began pulling away from slow-growing food brands and tilting toward health and beauty. The shift accelerated through the 2010s with acquisitions including Dollar Shave Club for a reported $1 billion in 2016 and Carver Korea, a skincare brand, for $2.7 billion in 2017. Moving out the other direction, Unilever sold its margarine and spreads division to investment firm KKR for €6.8 billion in December 2017, a transaction that completed in July 2018 and produced a new company called Upfield, home to Flora, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter, and Country Crock. In November 2021, Unilever agreed to sell most of its tea operations, organised under the Ekaterra division, to CVC Capital Partners for €4.5 billion, completing the deal in summer 2022. The ice cream unit, including Magnum and Ben & Jerry's, was spun off as a standalone business called The Magnum Ice Cream Company and completed its demerger in November 2025. In March 2026, Unilever agreed to combine its remaining food business with spice maker McCormick & Company in a deal valuing the combined entity at more than $65 billion, with Unilever shareholders expected to hold approximately 65 percent of the new company and Unilever receiving a one-time cash payment of $15.7 billion.

• 7. The Dove Paradox

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  Dove was first launched in the United States in 1957, and for decades it was simply a soap brand. In September 2004, Dove launched its Real Beauty campaign, focusing on women of all shapes and skin colours. By 2007 it had expanded to include women of all ages, running primarily as television advertising that gained additional reach online. The campaign drew admiration for presenting a broader image of beauty than typical advertising, but it also drew criticism. Some members of the public felt that Dove's ads implied cellulite was unsightly and that women's ageing was something to be ashamed of, finding a contradiction between the campaign's stated message and its actual images. Running in parallel, the company's Axe brand, sold as Lynx in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, and New Zealand, was marketing to young men between the ages of 16 and 24 with advertising that a company description called a tongue-in-cheek take on the mating game. Lynx advertising regularly drew bans in multiple countries. In 2012, the Clean Balls advertisement was banned. In 2011, a shower gel campaign was banned in the United Kingdom. Unilever publicly acknowledged that using images it knew would draw complaints generated free publicity, a strategy it described as deliberately seeking controversy for brand recognition.

• 8. Russia, Scrutiny, and What Remains

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  After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Unilever suspended all imports and exports to Russia while its Russian operations continued trading. Between 2021 and 2022, profits from the Russian wing doubled to 9.2 billion rubles, equivalent to approximately €108 million, and the business paid 3.2 billion rubles in taxes during the same period. CEO Alan Jope said the company believed staying was the best option to prevent the business from falling into Russian hands and to protect its employees. In July 2023, Ukraine's National Agency on Corruption Prevention placed Unilever on a list of war sponsors. Hein Schumacher, who became CEO in July 2023, told reporters that operating in a constrained manner was the least bad option. On the 10th of October 2024, Schumacher announced Unilever had completed the sale of its entire Russian business, including four factories, to the Arnest Group, a Russian manufacturer of perfume, cosmetics, and household products. In June 2025, Unilever announced the acquisition of Dr. Squatch, an American personal care brand, for $1.5 billion, subject to regulatory and shareholder approval. The current Unilever corporate logo, introduced in 2004 and designed by Wolff Olins and Miles Newlyn, arranges 25 distinct icons inside the letter U, each representing a sub-brand or a corporate value, built around the idea of adding vitality to life.