The company produces and distributes a vast number of well-known brands in the areas of nutrition, hygiene and personal care that are used by consumers all over the world. The history of Unilever dates back to 1885, William Lever established a soap manufacturing company in the UK with his brothers and named the company Lever Brothers in 1885.
William Hesketh Lever was born at Bolton, Lancashire in 1852 was the son of grocer. Together with James Lever, William Lever opened soap factory at Warrington, England, in 1885. Their products, Sunlight, the world’s first packaged soap, was very successful. It was trademark in the UK in 1884. The soup they made in ready molded tablet.Previously laundry soap was marketed in bars and grocers cut off pieces and sold them by weight.
In 1888 Lever Brothers opened a first overseas sales office in Sydney, Australia. Until 1919 Lever was wholly own and controlled by the founder. By 1919, as a result of single-minded expansionist, commercial policies, his firm accounted for 60 percent of soap production in Britain.
The margarine Union had been formed by Jurgen and Van den Berghs in 1927. The Dutch Margarine Union based in Netherlands, and later joined by a number of other Dutch and central European companies.
Most of the products were mare margarine, other edible fats, also oil milling, animal feeds and some soap production. Van den Bergh established a public limited company, Van den Berghs Margarine Ltd in the United Kingdom in 1895. The Dutch Margarine Union merged with Lever Brothers of United Kingdom in 1929 to form Unilever.
During the 1930s, the structure and management of Unilever has been described as a professional largely non-family managed hierarchy. For tax, purpose, two separate entities were established, one in London and another in Rotterdam.
Historically, Unilever has grown to be a very multilocal company. However, while the company used to work with regional supply chains on regional brands. Unilever started to globalize their brands in the early and mid-1990s.
A brief history of Unilever
