How Unilever Was Formed: The Anglo-Dutch Merger
Unilever was created in 1929 when a British soap company and a Dutch margarine producer merged. Today it owns Dove, Hellmann's, Knorr, Ben & Jerry's, and hundreds more. Here is the full story.
A British soap maker and a Dutch margarine producer had never directly competed. They simply kept driving each other's costs up. Both companies needed the same raw material: West African palm oil. Lever Brothers used it to make soap. Margarine Unie used it to make margarine. By the late 1920s, the two companies had concluded that a merger would solve the procurement competition entirely.
On January 1, 1930, Lever Brothers and Margarine Unie became Unilever.
That founding logic (not market dominance, but shared supply costs) is easy to forget when you look at what Unilever is today. Unilever (LON: ULVR) is now the third-largest consumer goods company in the world by revenue. For fiscal year 2024, the company reported approximately €60.1 billion in turnover, employs approximately 128,000 people, and sells products in over 190 countries. Its current portfolio includes Dove, Hellmann's, Knorr, Magnum, Axe/Lynx, Vaseline, Lux, Rexona, TRESemmé, and over 400 brands overall, though that number is shrinking under the current CEO's portfolio restructuring.
This post covers the full history of Unilever from the 1885 founding of Lever Brothers through the Anglo-Dutch merger, a century of acquisitions, the recent divestiture wave, and where the company stands as of 2026.
Lever Brothers: Soap for the Working Class
William Hesketh Lever was a Lancastrian grocer's son who had a simple insight in 1884: working-class consumers were being sold poor-quality, adulterated bar soap that was cut from unnamed blocks. If you pre-wrapped soap in a named, branded package, you could charge a premium and build consumer loyalty. He and his brother James went into soap manufacturing in 1885 in Warrington, Lancashire.
Lever's first branded product was Sunlight Soap, launched in 1884 and produced from 1885. The name was chosen to evoke cleanliness and brightness. By 1888, demand had outgrown the Warrington factory and Lever Brothers built a new purpose-designed factory and model village on the south bank of the Mersey at Port Sunlight in Cheshire, one of the earliest examples of corporate welfare architecture.
By 1900, Lever Brothers was producing 150,000 tons of soap annually and was the largest soap manufacturer in the United Kingdom. The company had already begun international expansion with factories in the United States, Canada, Australia, and Continental Europe.
Under William Lever, who became Viscount Leverhulme in 1917, the company built vertically integrated supply chains by acquiring palm oil plantations in West Africa and the Congo. These acquisitions later attracted controversy because they involved land concessions from Belgian colonial authorities at the expense of indigenous populations.
Margarine Unie: Dutch Margarine Giants
The Dutch margarine industry was dominated by two family companies, both founded in the 19th century to produce margarine, a butter substitute developed in France in 1869 as an affordable fat for soldiers and working-class consumers.
Jurgens: Founded by Anton Jurgens in Oss, Netherlands, in 1867. Jurgens was among the earliest commercial producers of margarine in the Netherlands.
Van den Bergh: Founded by the Van den Bergh family, also in the Netherlands, producing margarine from the 1870s onward.
After decades of competition between the two Dutch families and parallel competition with Lever Brothers for raw material supplies, Jurgens and Van den Bergh merged in 1927 to form Margarine Unie. The motivation was the same as the subsequent Unilever merger: shared commodity inputs and the leverage of combined purchasing.
The 1930 Merger Structure
The merger that created Unilever was structured as a dual-company arrangement: Unilever Limited (the British entity) and Unilever N.V. (the Dutch entity), both listed on their respective national stock exchanges. The two companies were bound by a series of agreements to operate as a single economic entity while maintaining separate legal personalities.
This dual structure was partly motivated by the preference of the Dutch founding families to maintain a Dutch legal entity and partly by the different tax and regulatory environments of the United Kingdom and Netherlands. It became one of the most enduring and unusual corporate governance structures in global business.
The dual structure persisted until Unilever unified into a single UK-incorporated company in November 2020, ending 90 years of the Anglo-Dutch arrangement. Unilever PLC is now listed on the London Stock Exchange and traded as ULVR.
Building the Modern Portfolio: The Acquisition Decades
Unilever's brand portfolio was assembled over a century through continuous acquisition alongside organic brand development.
1937: Acquired Thomas J. Lipton Company, adding the Lipton tea brand. Lipton became one of the world's largest tea brands and remained in Unilever's portfolio until 2022, when the Ekaterra tea business (including Lipton, PG Tips, and other tea brands) was sold to CVC Capital Partners for approximately €4.5 billion.
1944: Acquired Pepsodent toothpaste, entering the oral care category. Later divested as the oral care category consolidated around Colgate and P&G.
1957: Acquired Good Humor, the US ice cream brand. The acquisition launched Unilever's ice cream category that would eventually encompass Magnum, Wall's, Ben & Jerry's, Cornetto, and Breyers.
1961: Launched Dove soap bar in the United States. Dove was developed internally based on the moisturising soap formula used on wounded soldiers during World War II. Dove has subsequently grown into one of the world's most valuable personal care brands.
1987: Acquired Chesebrough-Pond's for approximately $3.1 billion. The acquisition added Vaseline, Pond's cream, Fabergé, and several other health and beauty brands.
1989: Acquired Calvin Klein Cosmetics and Fabergé fragrance assets.
1996: Acquired Helene Curtis Industries for approximately $770 million, adding Suave and Finesse hair care brands in the United States.
2000: Acquired Ben & Jerry's Homemade Ice Cream for approximately $326 million, adding the Vermont-based premium ice cream brand with its progressive social mission positioning. Acquired Best Foods for approximately $20.3 billion, the largest acquisition in Unilever's history to that date, adding Hellmann's mayonnaise, Knorr soups and seasonings, and several other food brands.
2010: Acquired Alberto Culver for approximately $3.7 billion, adding the TRESemmé hair care brand and several other beauty brands.
2015: Acquired REN Skincare, expanding the premium beauty portfolio.
2016: Acquired Dollar Shave Club for approximately $1 billion, marking Unilever's entry into the direct-to-consumer razor subscription model and the male grooming category.
The Ben & Jerry's Controversy
The Ben & Jerry's acquisition has produced one of the most unusual ownership disputes in brand history. Ben & Jerry's was acquired with a specific governance provision: an independent board of directors with authority to protect the brand's social mission, separate from Unilever's standard corporate governance.
In 2021, the Ben & Jerry's independent board voted to end product sales in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories, over the objection of Unilever management. Unilever subsequently sold the Ben & Jerry's licence in Israel to local licensee Avi Zinger, allowing sales to continue under a different arrangement, while Ben & Jerry's board contested the validity of the sale.
The dispute became a test case for the limits of social mission governance within a large corporate parent and generated litigation between Ben & Jerry's independent board and Unilever that was ongoing as of early 2026.
The 2022-2026 Strategic Reset
Following a failed 2021 attempt to acquire the consumer healthcare business of GlaxoSmithKline for approximately £50 billion, which was rejected by GSK shareholders and damaged Unilever CEO Alan Jope's credibility, Jope resigned in 2022. Hein Schumacher, formerly CEO of FrieslandCampina, was appointed CEO in 2023.
Schumacher has executed a significant portfolio restructuring:
- The Ekaterra tea business (Lipton, PG Tips) was sold to CVC Capital Partners in 2022 for approximately €4.5 billion.
- The ice cream division, comprising Magnum, Wall's, Ben & Jerry's, Cornetto, and others, was separated into an independent publicly listed company. The ice cream separation was completed in stages in 2024 and 2025, creating a standalone entity called Magnum Ice Cream Group.
- Approximately 25 other smaller brands were divested as part of a focus on the top 30 "Power Brands" that account for approximately 70% of Unilever's revenue.
Unilever Today: The Current Portfolio
Unilever's retained portfolio as of early 2026 is organised into three divisions:
- Beauty and Wellbeing: Dove, TRESemmé, Sunsilk, Alberto Balsam, Lux, Pears, Vaseline, AHC, Paula's Choice (acquired 2021), Liquid I.V.
- Personal Care: Axe/Lynx, Rexona/Sure, Degree, Signal, Closeup.
- Home Care: Omo/Persil, Surf, Domestos, Cif, Comfort.
- Nutrition: Hellmann's, Knorr, The Vegetarian Butcher, Marmite, Bovril, Colman's.
The Bottom Line
Unilever is a company built on supply chain logic, not brand vision. The 1930 merger happened because two companies were bidding against each other for the same palm oil. That procurement rationale is still visible in the current portfolio restructuring: Hein Schumacher is cutting brands not because they are bad brands, but because managing 400 brands is operationally expensive and analytically complex. The current target is 30 "Power Brands" that account for approximately 70% of revenue.
What the next decade looks like depends on whether the divestiture strategy produces the margin improvement the market is expecting. As of early 2026, Unilever's stock trades at a discount to its FMCG peers, and the portfolio rationalization is the company's argument that the discount is unwarranted.
Browse Unilever's complete profile and brand index to see the current portfolio, or explore the beauty and personal care category to see how Unilever's brands position against competitors.
Explore Related Content
- Unilever - Full company profile and brand index
- Hellmann's - Unilever's flagship mayonnaise brand
- Knorr - Unilever's global seasoning and soup brand
- Dove - Unilever's personal care flagship
- How Nestlé Went From Baby Milk to Global Empire - Related brand history post
- The Origins of P&G: From Candles to Billion-Dollar Brands - Primary competitor history
Browse all Beauty & Personal Care brands →
Sources
1. Unilever Annual Report 2024 — https://www.unilever.com/investors/annual-report-and-accounts/ 2. London Stock Exchange: ULVR Company Profile — https://www.londonstockexchange.com 3. Unilever History — https://www.unilever.com/our-company/our-history/ 4. Wikidata: Unilever — https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q8134 5. Reuters: Unilever ice cream separation — https://www.reuters.com 6. Financial Times: Ben & Jerry's governance dispute — https://www.ft.com
All brand ownership data verified through WhoBrands.com research. Last verified: March 2026.
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