CompanyGraph
Unilever PLC
ULVR · United Kingdom
Sells food brands like Knorr and personal care brands like Dove through the same factories and delivery trucks in 190 countries.
Unilever makes products like Dove soap, Persil detergent, Knorr bouillon cubes, and Hellmann's mayonnaise, and it runs all of them through the same factories, the same delivery trucks, and the same country-level regulatory teams across 190 countries. Because soap and mayonnaise are both cheap, heavy goods that cost too much to ship long distances, Unilever must maintain local production in each market — and because food safety inspectors and cosmetic regulators both have to sign off on those local facilities, the compliance cost is built once and split across both product lines, which is what makes the whole operation economically viable in each country. Neither the food range nor the personal care range alone earns enough per unit to justify that local regulatory and distribution footprint on its own, but together they do, which means the two sides of the business are quietly subsidising each other in every market simultaneously. The single point of fragility is Indonesian palm oil, the main input for Dove soap base and Unilever's margarine lines — if EU deforestation rules cut off that supply, soap and margarine volumes fall in the same facilities that carry the shared compliance infrastructure, and the cross-subsidy that holds the whole joint footprint together collapses at once.
How does this company make money?
Unilever sells products wholesale — per unit — to grocery chains, mass merchants like Walmart, and pharmacies. It pays those retailers trade spending, which is money set aside to secure promotional slots and favorable shelf placement. In emerging markets where it cannot build direct retail relationships economically, it sells through local distributors who take a margin before the products reach store shelves.
What makes this company hard to replace?
Major grocery chains like Walmart and Tesco are locked in through multi-year co-packing contracts and shared quality systems built around Unilever's private label production — unwinding those takes time and money. Unilever's product registrations in 190 countries mean that any replacement supplier would have to re-file safety documents and run its own testing in each jurisdiction before its products could legally go on sale. Retailers that have integrated Dove, Persil, and Knorr into their shelf layouts across multiple product categories face a complicated and costly reorganization if they try to replace all of them at once.
What limits this company?
The soap base in Dove and the fat in some margarine lines both come from palm oil, which can only be grown at commercial scale in Indonesia and Malaysia. On top of that, Unilever requires certified sustainable palm oil, which narrows the eligible suppliers within those two countries even further. When that certified supply runs short, soap and margarine production shrinks — and there is no other region in the world where palm oil can be grown at the same scale to fill the gap.
What does this company depend on?
Unilever cannot operate without Indonesian palm oil plantations, which supply the base for Dove soap and margarine products. It relies on European dairy cooperatives for ingredients in Magnum ice cream. It depends on specialty chemical suppliers for the petrochemical surfactants that go into its personal care products. It needs retail shelf space allocated by Walmart and Tesco to reach consumers. And it depends on active product safety certifications from regulators across 190 countries to keep its products legally on sale.
Who depends on this company?
Tesco and other large grocery chains depend on Dove, Persil, and Knorr to fill shelf space and bring shoppers through the door — losing those brands would leave significant gaps that are hard to replace quickly. Walmart's private label manufacturers rely on co-packing contracts with Unilever for store-brand personal care products. Indonesian palm oil cooperatives depend on Unilever as their largest single buyer of certified sustainable palm oil; if Unilever stopped buying, those cooperatives would lose the customer that makes the certification economically worthwhile.
How does this company scale?
Once a brand campaign or R&D formula is developed — a new Dove moisturizer, a new Knorr flavor — it can be adapted and rolled out across many markets at relatively low extra cost, with local advertising creative adjusted cheaply. What does not scale is the regulatory and formulation work required market by market: each of the 190 countries where Unilever operates requires its own product safety filings, its own testing, and often its own recipe adjustments to meet local taste or ingredient rules. That work cannot be centralized or automated, and it grows with every new market and every new product.
What external forces can significantly affect this company?
EU deforestation regulations could restrict palm oil imports from Indonesia, directly raising the cost of soap and margarine production. Demographic aging across Europe is reducing the number of consumers buying ice cream in some of Unilever's most established markets. Currency devaluation in countries like Turkey and Argentina hits hard because 58% of Unilever's revenues come from emerging markets — when those local currencies weaken against the euro, the money Unilever earns in those countries is worth less when counted in its home currency.
Where is this company structurally vulnerable?
If EU deforestation regulations cut off imports of Indonesian palm oil, Dove soap and Unilever's margarine lines would lose their primary ingredient. Production volume in the affected factories would fall. Those same factories carry the shared cost of maintaining dual food-and-cosmetic regulatory registrations and the joint distribution network across each country. With less soap and margarine moving through the system, the remaining food or personal care products would have to absorb that full cost alone — and the economics that make operating in 190 countries viable for both lines at once would collapse from a single sourcing event.