Success story of unilever company

•  So I’ve got a question for you today: whatis a company’s main responsibility? Is it just to make as much money as possibleor is it more than that? In recent years, a lot of brands try to appearas if they care about causes like saving the environment or offering fair wages, but isthat all just a PR exercise? 
• Today we’ll try to answer that questionby looking at how Dutch margarine and British soap spread their way across the world, bringingan incredible range of products, a bucket load of ice cream, and some major controversy. This is the history of Unilever.

•  When you walk into a supermarket, especiallyin the US, it’s estimated that over 75% of the products on sale actually come fromjust 10 companies. It might seem like an endless sea of brandsbut if you follow the money up high enough, it often ends up with one of these very, verybig fish. Unilever might not be the largest, that honorgoes to Nestle, but they are probably the most diverse.
•  You could wake up, brush your teeth, shower,make breakfast, clean the house, make lunch, have dessert and you know what? You could easily have used only Unilever productsfor the entire day. Unilever have four internal categories fortheir products: Personal Care, like shampoo and toothpaste.
  
•  Food, like, the stuff you put in your mouth. Refreshment, that’s ice cream and tea mainly,and finally, Home Care; laundry detergent and soap, for example. So, while it makes sense for a supermarketto sell all of these products, why are they all made by Unilever? Well, the simple answer is; fat. 
• Over the years, the chemistry of most of theirproducts has changed dramatically, but Unilever came about thanks to the 1929 merger of aDutch margarine producer, Margarine Unie, and a British soapmaker, the Lever Brothers. 

• Back then, the key ingredient in both theirproducts was animal fat. Margarine Unie was itself a merger of twodifferent margarine makers who’d started out in the 1870s and 1880s. Lever Brothers began in 1885 and was fueledby its main brand Sunlight, the world's first packaged, branded laundry soap. 
• Their merger was really just to help bothwith the supply of fat. To this day, Unilever is actually a jointventure between the two parts, rather than a legal merger.
•  This was to avoid all the tax levies thatwould be due by setting up entirely in London or entirely in Rotterdam. So, there is Unilever NL and Unilever PLC,one floated on the stock exchange in Amsterdam and the other on the one in London. 
• They do give their shares equivalent valueand have the same board of directors, so it technically operates like one economic entity. 

• In the first few decades, they launched oracquired some of their most enduring brands, which are now each worth over $1 billion. By the 1970s, for example, they controlledover 30% of Western Europe’s ice cream market. They’ve gone on to sell almost a quarterof all the ice cream in the world today. 
• They mostly use the Heartbrand logo and keepthe original name of the product they’ve taken over, like Frisko in Denmark or TioRico in Venezuela. 
• Naturally, their strategy is to focus on impulsepurchases, like those freezer stands in the park or by the counter in convenience stores.
•  But they hit problems with monopoly law andin 2000, the UK government decided that Unilever were illegally blocking competition by rentingfreezer cabinets to retailers on the condition that they only stocked Unilever products. 

• You might think that this is pretty much standardpractice for businesses and you’d be right, but the sheer volume and variety of unethicalbehavior Unilever has exhibited is incredible. First up, there’s price fixing cases. 
• In January 2002, Unilever, P&G and the Germancompany Henkel agreed to fix prices on detergents for 3 years. Unilever and P&G were fined over €300 million,while Henkle got off for ratting them out. Did Unilever learn their lesson, though? Not really, no.
•  They’re on trial again, this time in SouthAfrica for price fixing with a big Malaysian conglomerate. The watchdog tackling the case wants 10% oftheir local turnover as a fine. 
• On an ecological level, Unilever have playeda part in the devastating impact that palm oil has had on the environment. 

• Indonesia is losing 2% of its rainforest everyyear, with palm oil production being the biggest cause for that, which coincidentally involvesmany of Unilever’s suppliers. 
• In 2016, they had to settle a long runningallegation that they had poisoned hundreds of Indian workers with Mercury and the listof controversies goes on and on. 
• However, here is where a new character entersour story. Paul Polman originally wanted to become apriest in his native Netherlands, but instead he chose the slightly less holy path by joiningProcter and Gamble and then Nestle. 
• Finally, he became CEO of Unilever and promisedto enact radical changes. He wanted to cut the company’s environmentalimpact in half by 2020, to improve the health of a billion people, and to still double salesdespite that. The interesting thing though is that he’sactually making some serious progress. 

• Emissions are way down, there’s 85% lesswaste going to landfills and Polman is out there actively pushing for stricter environmentalcontrols. That’s not to say there aren’t still plentyof issues but, here’s the real problem: is it possible for a company of this sizeto achieve true sustainability?
•  Unilever have such an enormous range of productsthat tackling every single ingredient will likely take lifetimes of effort. If it’s not palm oil in Indonesia, it’ssoybeans in the US or vanilla from Madagascar. 
• We have become very cynical about big business,and for good reason, so it’s hard to have complete faith that Unilever actually wantsto help, rather than just trying to improve its image. But maybe Polman is simply doing the mosthe can, accepting that some improvement is better than none. 
• Today Unilever is growing, but it’s lessthan expected and this led to a takeover attempt by Kraft Heinz, for $143 billion in February2017. 

• That offer was rejected, and many people believethis is because Polman values his sustainability plan above everything else. Some shareholders are calling for his head,saying his responsibility is to them first and only, but then again, those people aren’tworking for minimum wage on a farm in Pakistan.
•  Of course, the bottom line is that consumersalways vote with their wallets, showing their ethics through their purchases. 
• Hopefully, Unilever will take the right stepsin the future so that people actually feel proud of what they buy. Now, there’s actually a surprising amountof science and math that go into the creation of Unilever’s products. 
• Learning all of that on your own might bedifficult, but with Brilliant.org you can dive deep into the world of physics, mathand technology in the easiest way possible.