Unilever’s brands now sit in four Business Groups: Beauty & Wellbeing (Dove hair and skin, Vaseline, Liquid I.V., Nutrafol), Personal Care (Dove, Rexona, Axe, Lifebuoy, Lux), Home Care (Dirt Is Good, Surf, Domestos, Cif, Comfort) and Foods (Knorr, Hellmann’s, Horlicks). A shorter list of Power Brands made 78% of its 50.5 billion euros of turnover in 2025. Magnum, Ben & Jerry’s and the other ice cream brands left on 6 December 2025, when Unilever demerged them as The Magnum Ice Cream Company.
In 2025 Personal Care turned over 13.2 billion euros, Foods 12.9 billion, Beauty & Wellbeing 12.8 billion and Home Care 11.6 billion, on a continuing basis without ice cream.
Unilever names its Power Brands group by group. Together they made 78% of 2025 turnover and grew underlying sales by 4.3%.
03
Same name, different groups
Dove appears twice: its hair and skin care sit in Beauty & Wellbeing, its soaps and deodorants in Personal Care. Surf and Dirt Is Good are separate laundry Power Brands in Home Care.
04
Buy premium, prune the tail
Recent bolt-on buys include Dr. Squatch, Minimalist and Wild, while Unilever disposed of local brands, mainly in Foods, announced the closure of REN and the divestment of Kate Somerville, and cut its SKUs by over 20% since 2022.
What changed in 2025-26
Ice cream leaves the family
Unilever completed the demerger of its ice cream business on 6 December 2025. The Magnum Ice Cream Company N.V. now lists separately in Amsterdam, London and New York, and Unilever kept a 19.85% stake that it plans to sell down.
A new CEO and a sharper list
Fernando Fernandez became CEO in March 2025. His plan centres on Desire at Scale for the Power Brands and on seven priorities: Beauty, Wellbeing, Personal Care, premium, digital commerce, the United States and India.
AI in the content factory
Unilever launched a Beauty AI studio with a technology partner and a Personal Care AI Studio to produce marketing assets faster, governed by its Brand DNAi framework. In R&D it says AI-powered simulations have removed the need for multiple physical trials.
Who owns Unilever
At 31 December 2025 the only holders above 3% were BlackRock with 8.5%, The Vanguard Group with 5.4% and Wellington Management with 3.1%, according to the 2025 Form 20-F.
Unilever's Business Groups and Power Brands (2025)
Personal Care
Power Brands (examples)Axe, Closeup, Dove, Lifebuoy, Lux, Pepsodent, Rexona
2025 turnover13.2 billion euros
Foods
Power Brands (examples)Hellmann's, Horlicks, Knorr
Power Brands (examples)Cif, Comfort, Dirt Is Good, Domestos, Radiant, Sunlight, Surf
2025 turnover11.6 billion euros
Ice cream (demerged)
Power Brands (examples)Magnum, Ben & Jerry's: now The Magnum Ice Cream Company
2025 turnoverUnilever keeps 19.85%
What it means for you
When you count Unilever's brands, count the Power Brands: they are where the marketing money and growth sit.
Check the brand's Business Group before comparing results; Dove's numbers are split across two groups.
Do not list Magnum or Ben & Jerry's as Unilever brands after 6 December 2025.
Founders of premium wellness or personal care brands: Unilever's recent buys (Dr. Squatch, Wild, Minimalist) show the profile it acquires.
Marketers and agencies: expect AI content studios and brand rules like Brand DNAi to set the pace of asset production.
The Business Engineer lens
Unilever is turning a sprawling brand list into a concentrated set of premium, social-first brands, and is using AI to make content at the speed social channels demand. The Business Engineer reads this as preparing brands for a world where shoppers and AI agents see fewer, stronger names.
Unilever no longer leads with a total brand count. It manages to a list of Power Brands that made 78% of 2025 turnover, while it has been selling or closing smaller local brands.
Does Unilever still own Magnum and Ben & Jerry's?
No. They moved to The Magnum Ice Cream Company, demerged on 6 December 2025. Unilever kept a 19.85% stake that it plans to sell down.
What are Unilever's biggest brands?
Power Brands include Dove, Vaseline, Rexona, Axe, Lifebuoy, Sunsilk, TRESemmé, Liquid I.V., Nutrafol, Knorr, Hellmann's, Domestos, Cif, Comfort, Surf and Dirt Is Good.
Who owns Unilever?
Unilever PLC is publicly held. At 31 December 2025 BlackRock held 8.5%, The Vanguard Group 5.4% and Wellington Management 3.1%, the only holdings above 3%.
The complete explainer, cleaned up and reformatted for mobile.
In short
Unilever made €50.5 billion of turnover in 2025 from four Business Groups: Personal Care (€13.2 billion: Dove, Rexona, Axe, Lifebuoy), Foods (€12.9 billion: Knorr, Hellmann’s), Beauty & Wellbeing (€12.8 billion: Vaseline, Liquid I.V., Nutrafol, Dermalogica) and Home Care (€11.6 billion: Dirt Is Good, Domestos, Cif). Its ice cream brands, including Magnum and Ben & Jerry’s, were spun off as The Magnum Ice Cream Company on 6 December 2025.
Sources: Unilever Annual Report and Form 20-F for 2025 (SEC EDGAR) and FY2025 results announcement. Analysis by The Business Engineer.
How we source: figures on this page come from the company’s own filings (SEC 10-K, 10-Q and earnings releases, or its annual report), with the period stated next to each number. Last refreshed October 2026. Our methodology.
Video: Unilever, explained in about a minute. Tap for sound. Built from the company’s own filings.
Unilever was born from the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie and English soapmaker Lever Brothers in 1929. In subsequent decades, the company expanded beyond oil and fat-based products and now has a portfolio of over 400 brands.
Dove
Dove was founded in the United States in 1957 and initially offered soap with a patented blend of mild cleansers and moisturizers.
Today, Dove is the number one dermatologist-recommended brand in the United States, France, and Canada.
In addition to soap, Dove-branded products also encompass hair care, lotions, moisturizers, beauty bars, body washes, and antiperspirants.
Dove has been part of the Unilever family for decades, with former Lever Brothers employee Vincent Lamberti granted the original manufacturing patent to Dove soap in the 1950s.
The Business Engineer view: Unilever is shrinking its list to grow its brands
Source: Unilever Annual Report and Form 20-F for 2025 (SEC EDGAR) and FY2025 results announcement. Analysis by The Business Engineer.
The ‘400+ brands’ number is the wrong way to read Unilever now. The company manages to a shorter list it calls Power Brands, which made 78% of 2025 turnover and grew 4.3%, faster than the group’s 3.5% underlying sales growth. In Personal Care they are 90% of the business.
The ice cream demerger made the shape clearer. Ice cream was €7.7 billion of turnover in 2025, a seasonal, freezer-dependent business with different economics from soap and sauces. Unilever spun it off as The Magnum Ice Cream Company and kept a 19.85% stake. What remains earned a 20.0% underlying operating margin, up 0.6 points.
The mix inside shows where the money is. Personal Care and Foods each earned 22.6%, Beauty & Wellbeing 19.2% and Home Care 14.9%. The newer premium beauty and wellness brands (Nutrafol, Liquid I.V., K18, Hourglass) are where Unilever is adding, while Foods, built on Knorr and Hellmann’s, funds it.
The compression: Unilever is turning from a portfolio of hundreds of local brands into a focused set of global ones. Compare with P&G, which made the same move a decade earlier.
Magnum
Magnum is a Belgian ice cream brand that was developed and produced by Danish company Frisko in the late 1980s.
The original Magnum consisted of vanilla ice cream with a chocolate coating that would not perish in temperatures of -40°C. According to Unilever, it was the first hand-held ice cream marketed exclusively at adults.
Vaseline
Vaseline is an American petroleum jelly brand that also sells soaps, cleansers, lotions, deodorants, and skin creams.
Similar to the way Google is now a verb as well as a noun, the word “Vaseline” is commonly used as a generic term for any petroleum jelly.
Vaseline dates back to 1872 when chemist Robert Chesebrough learned of a wax residue that was produced by oil rig pumps.
Taking samples back to his lab in Brooklyn, Chesebrough extracted the usable petroleum jelly and began selling it as a medicinal product.
Omo
Omo is a British laundry detergent brand and is Unilever’s largest such brand. Depending on the location in which it is sold, Omo is also known as Skip, Excel, and Persil.
Omo was first registered in the United Kingdom as early as 1908. It is believed to be an acronym for “Old Mother Owl” to link the wisdom of an owl with the purchase of Omo laundry detergent.
Like Dove, Lifebuoy is another Unilever brand that can trace its origins back to Lever Brothers.
The first Lifebuoy product was released in 1894 and quickly became known for its distinctive red color and medicated carbolic scent.
It was released by William and James Lever to make the simple act of washing one’s hands more commonplace, with this pedigree of healthy hygiene practices still evident in Lifebuoy’s product range today.
History of Unilever
Unilever is a multinational consumer-packaged goods (CPG) company that is headquartered in London and is the result of a merger between the British soapmaker Lever Brothers and the Dutch company Margarine Unie.
Let’s delve into Unilever’s history below with a particular emphasis on its numerous acquisitions over the years.
The butter makers
In the 18th century, a family of carpenters known as the Jurgens started to on-sell butter they had received as payment for their work. Finding it to be a worthwhile exercise, the Jurgens moved to the Dutch city of Oss in 1860 to start a butter business.
Around the same time, the Van den Bergh family was also selling butter in Oss and in 1870, established exports to the lucrative English market. In 1871, the Jurgens family acquired the patent for making margarine and shared it with the Van den Bergh family.
The Lever family
In 1885, brothers James Darcy Lever and William Hesketh Lever founded Level Brothers – a soap manufacturer and seller that was the first to market a wrapped bar of soap made from tallow and various vegetable and cotton seed oils.
Like the Jurgens and Van den Bergs, the Level brothers’ business expanded rapidly into continental Europe and overseas. Their cause was also helped by innovative advertising campaigns that featured unique slogans and prize competitions.
Unilever is formed
By the First World War, Lever Brothers was making margarine and both the Dutch butter families had expanded into soap. The families merged in 1927 to form Margarine Unie, with Lever Brothers joining other major European producers under the group in 1929.
Unilever was thus formed as a portmanteau of the two entities, and the company wasted no time with its first acquisitions of trade companies in Africa. Over the Second World War, the company was prevented from investing in Europe and choose to focus on the UK and US markets instead.
In 1943, Unilever acquired T. J. Lipton, vegetable canner Batchelors Peas, and a majority stake in Birds Eye owner Frosted Foods. The following year, it acquired American toothpaste brand Pepsodent. At the time, meat, fish, ice cream, and canned goods accounted for just 9% of the company’s turnover.
Diversification
Over the 1950s, the rapid development of new markets for consumer-packaged goods (especially in Africa and Asia) provided further expansion opportunities for Unilever. Post-war prosperity in Europe and much of the West also resulted in a consumer boom and an increase in the standard of living.
The now billion-dollar brands Sunsilk and Dove were launched in 1954 and 1957 respectively, with Unilever purchasing the American ice cream brand Good Humor in 1961. In the mid-1960s, a lackluster butter and margarine market and increased competition from P&G forced Unilever to diversify into other products.
The start of the 1980s decade saw Unilever as the 26th largest business in the world with diverse interests in tropical plantations, packaging, shipping, plastics, and various food, home, and personal care products.
That same year, Unilever acquired the well-known brands Ben & Jerry’s and Slim Fast. The company then decided to split into two divisions (one for home, one for personal care) in 2001. By this point, the company owned some 900 brands.
2010s-present
Unilever developed its sustainable business model plan over this period, but nevertheless continued to acquire brands. These include:
Alberto Culver (2010) – maker of personal care brands such as Simple, VO5, TRESemmé, and Nexxus.
Chinese water purification company Qinyuan (2014).
American deodorant brand Schmidt’s Naturals (2017).
Key takeaways:
Unilever is a multinational consumer-packaged goods (CPG) company that is headquartered in London and is the result of a merger between the British soapmaker Lever Brothers and the Dutch company Margarine Unie.
Unilever was thus formed as a portmanteau of the above entities, and the company wasted no time with its first acquisitions of trade companies in Africa. In 1943, Unilever acquired T. J. Lipton, vegetable canner Batchelors Peas, and a majority stake in Birds Eye owner Frosted Foods.
Over the 1950s, post-war prosperity and the rapid development of new markets for consumer-packaged goods provided further expansion and acquisitional opportunities. The now billion-dollar brands Sunsilk and Dove were launched in 1954 and 1957 respectively, with acquisitions continuing unabated in the decades that followed.
Unilever was born from the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie and English soapmaker Lever Brothers in 1929. The company now has a 400 brand portfolio with most related to consumer packaged goods.
Dove and Lifebuoy are two Unilever brands that were developed at Lever Brothers before the merger, while Omo is a British laundry detergent brand considered to be the oldest such brand in the world.
Key Highlights
Unilever’s Formation: Unilever was created in 1929 through the merger of Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie and English soapmaker Lever Brothers. The name “Unilever” comes from a combination of these two entities.
Brand Portfolio: Unilever has a diverse portfolio of over 400 brands that cater to various consumer needs across the globe.
Dove: Founded in 1957, Dove is known for its patented blend of mild cleansers and moisturizers. It has expanded beyond soap to include hair care, lotions, moisturizers, beauty bars, body washes, and antiperspirants. It’s the number one dermatologist-recommended brand in several countries.
Magnum: Magnum, a Belgian ice cream brand, was developed in the late 1980s. It’s recognized for being the first hand-held ice cream marketed exclusively to adults.
Vaseline: Vaseline, an American petroleum jelly brand, was founded in 1872 by chemist Robert Chesebrough. The name “Vaseline” has become synonymous with petroleum jelly.
Omo: Omo is a British laundry detergent brand and Unilever’s largest in this category. Depending on the region, it’s known as Skip, Excel, or Persil.
Lifebuoy: Lifebuoy, introduced in 1894, is known for its red color and medicated carbolic scent. It was aimed at promoting hand hygiene. Unilever continues to offer products that emphasize healthy hygiene practices.
Unilever’s History and Acquisitions: Unilever’s history involves a series of mergers and acquisitions. It initially emerged from the merger of Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers. The company continued to expand its portfolio through strategic acquisitions, including tea, beauty and health brands, cosmetics companies, and ice cream brands.
Diversification: Over time, Unilever diversified its product offerings to include a wide range of consumer goods beyond its original focus on butter, margarine, and soap.
Sustainability: Unilever developed a sustainable business model over the years, and despite this focus, the company continued to make acquisitions to enhance its brand lineup.
In 2020, Unilever reported revenue of 50.72 billion. The company’s revenue increased in 2021, reaching a total of 52.44 billion. Unilever experienced significant revenue growth in 2022, with total revenue amounting to 60.07 billion.
In 2020, Unilever reported a net profit of 6.07 billion. The company’s net profit increased in 2021, reaching a total of 6.62 billion. Unilever experienced significant growth in net profit in 2022, with total net profit amounting to 8.27 billion.
Unilever is the world’s leading consumer goods company, making and selling around 400 brands in more than 190 countries in 2022 . With over 60 billion euros in revenues that span personal care, home care, foods, and refreshment, Unilever is the second largest advertiser in the world. Unilever can reach millions of consumers across the world thanks to its marketing campaigns.
Unilever generated over €60 billion in revenue 2022, comprising many brands spanning beauty & wellbeing, personal care, home care, nutrition, and ice cream.
Gennaro Cuofano is a CRO and tech executive who has worked in AI since late 2015, starting with bringing NLP, natural-language generation, voice and chatbot products to the marketing industry. His background is in law and finance: he holds a Master's degree in Law and an International MBA with an emphasis on corporate finance (LUISS Business School and the University of San Diego, 2012), and worked as a financial analyst at a real-estate investment firm in San Diego and as an assistant controller. His work focuses on business model strategy, business engineering and, more broadly, structural analysis: how companies make money, read from their own filings. He created FourWeekMBA and leads research there and at The Business Engineer, his newsletter on AI and business strategy, with over 95,000 subscribers and more than 1,000 published analyses. His writing has also appeared on Entrepreneur (for example, How to Digitize a Family Business in Europe) and HackerNoon. Find him on LinkedIn and Substack. See how we source.
