UNILEVER A journey in China with a piece of soap

Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of food, household and personal care products. It has more than 400 brands, including OMO, Dove, Knorr, Lipton, and Wall’s which are very popular among the Chinese.

Unilever’s history in China can be traced back to 1923, when Lever Brothers established China’s SOAP CoLtd on the bank of the Huangpu River in Shanghai.

Seizing on the reform and opening-up, Unilever began to develop rapidly in China. Shanghai, during the 1980s, because of its distinctive consumer culture and its eagerness to use foreign capital to transform and develop the industrial system, was totally in line with Unilever’s investment objective.

The company first entered Shanghai in 1986, and then established joint ventures in Beijing, Hefei, Zhangjiakou and Guangzhou. Starting in 1997, Unilever began a decade-long restructuring in China and has now been grouped into wholly-owned companies.

In order to fulfill its commitment to long-term development in China, Unilever began a gradient transfer since 2000 to adapt to the fierce competition in China and the global market. Since 2002, Unilever has closed and merged seven factories and moved all daily chemical production from Shanghai to Hefei, Anhui Province. A modern large-scale production and processing base has thus been formed.

Meanwhile, Unilever decided to take Shanghai as its management and research center. In September 2009, Unilever launched itsShanghai research center focusing on global research and development, fulfilling its commitment to locate intelligence- and capital-intensive projects in Shanghai for long, thus bringing China, now its sixth largest R&D center across the globe, into its global research system.

Unilever is also committed to fulfilling its social responsibility. Since 1998, Unilever has been one of the first to support the basic scientific research in Shanghai. Every three years, the company and the Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Commission will each fund US$300,000 for independent research. In September 2004, the two jointly established a R&D fund to support research on natural medicines, nervous system and cell differentiation.