Unilever is a Dutch-British transnational consumer goods company headquartered in Rotterdam, Netherlands, and London, United Kingdom. Its products include food, beverages, cleaning agents, and personal care products.
Unilever owns over 400 brands, with a turnover of over 50 billion euros in 2016, and thirteen brands with sales of over one billion euros: X / Lynx, Pigeon, Omo, Basel / Flora, Heartbrand Ice Cream, Hellman, Knorr, Lipton. "Lux, Dove, Magnum, Rama, Rexona / Degree, Sunsilk, and Surf." During the second half of the 20th century, the company rapidly diversified from being a manufacturer of oils and fats to products and expanded its operations worldwide.
So I got a question for you today: What is the main responsibility of a company? Is it just to earn as much money as possible? In recent years, a lot of brands try to appear if they care about reasons like saving the environment or offering fair wages, but is it just a PR practice?
Today we will try to answer the question of how Dutch margarine and British soap are spreading worldwide, bringing an incredible range of products, a bucket load of ice cream, and some major controversies. This is the history of Unilever. When you go to the supermarket, especially in the US, it is estimated that over 75% of the products on sale come from 10 companies. It can seem like an endless sea of brands bus. If you follow the money well enough, it often ends up with one of these, many, many fish. Unilever may not be the largest, which honors Nestle, but they are probably the most diverse. You can get up, brush your teeth, bathe, snack, clean the house, have lunch, eat sweets and you know what? You could easily use only Unilever products throughout the day.
Unilever has four intrinsic categories Fairhair Products: Personal Care, such as shampoo and toothpaste. Food, like, stuff inserted in your mouth. Refreshments, mainly ice cream and tea, and finally, home care; For example laundry soap and soap. So, when it makes sense that a supermarket sells all these products, why are they all made by Unilever? Well, the simple answer is; fat. Over the years, the chemistry of most of their products has changed dramatically, but Unilever came in 1929 due to the merger of the Adach margarine manufacturer, margarine uni, and The Leon Brothers, a British soap manufacturer. After that, the important ingredient in both of their rituals was animal fat. Margarine Uni itself was a merger of two different margarine makers, which began in the 1870s and 1880s. Lever Brothers started in 1885 and its main brand Sunlight was fueled by the world's first packaged branded laundry soap. Their merger was just to help supply fat. To date, Unilever is a joint between two parts rather than a legal merger. This was to avoid all tax levies arising solely from being established in London or entirely in Rotterdam. So, Unilever is NL and Unilever plc, one floats on the Stock Exchange in Amsterdam and the other in London. They give equal value to their shares and have similar boards of directors, so it technically acts like an economic entity. In the first few decades, they launched some of their most enduring brands, now worth more than $ 1 billion each. For example, until the 1970s, they controlled 30% of Western Europe's ice cream market. They have gone on to sell almost a quarter of all ice cream in the world today.
They mostly use the Heartbrand logo and the original name of the product they take, such as Frisco in Denmark or Tiórico in Venezuela. Naturally, their strategy is to focus on impulse purchases, such as standing by the counter in a freezer park or a convenience store. But they hit problems with the monopoly law and with 2000, the UK government decided that Unilever was illegally blocking retailers' rental competition, on the condition that they only stock Unilever products. You might think that this is a very high standard for businesses and you'd be right, but the sheer quantity and variety of unethical Unilever is incredible. First, the pricing of the cases.
In January 2002, Unilever, P&G, and German company Heinkel agreed to fix prices on detergents for 3 years. Unilever and P&G were fined more than € 300 million, while Hinkley took off to beat them out. Unilever learned its lesson, though? not really no. They are on trial again, this time with a large Malaysian group in South Africa for pricing. The watchmen dealing with the case want 10% of their local businesses as fines. At the environmental level, Unilever has played a role in the devastating effects of palm oil on the environment. Indonesia is losing 2% of its rainforest every year, the biggest reason being for palm oil production, which coincidentally includes Unilever's suppliers. In 2016, he had to settle a long-standing agreement that he poisoned hundreds of Indian workers with mercury and the list dispute goes ahead. However, here is where a new character enters the story. Paul Polman originally wanted to become A priest in his native Netherlands, but instead chose a slightly less pious path than Pro Procter and Gamble and then Nestle. In the end, he became CEO of Unilever and promised radical changes. He wanted to reduce the company's environmental nation by half to improve the health of billions of people by 2020, and still double its sales. However, interestingly, he is making some serious progress. Emissions are declining, 85% are on the way to landfills and Poulmon is out and actively pushing for environmental exclusion.
This is not to say that there are still not a lot of issues, but here is the real problem: is it possible for this Size company to achieve true stability? Unilever has such a large range of products that every single component will probably be taken over the lifetime of the effort. If it is not palm oil in Indonesia, it is helpful in the US or vanilla from Madagascar. We have become very cynical about big business, and for good reason, so it's hard to fully believe that Unilever wants help, rather than trying to improve its image. But maybe Polman is just trying the most, recognizing that some improvement is better than none. Today Unilever is growing, but it was predictable and it acquired $ 143 billion in February 2017 by Kraft Heinz. That proposal was rejected, and many believe that Polman puts his stability plan above everything else. Some shareholders are calling for their heads, stating that they have a responsibility first and only on them, but then, they are working for minimum wages on a farm in Pakistan. Of course, the bottom line is that consumer goods vote out of their pocket, showing their ethics through their purchases. Hopefully, Unilever will take the right steps in the future so that people will be proud of what they buy.
I hope you enjoy the story.
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