Unilever Eyes $1.1 Billion in Savings as It Plans Leaner Future Away From Food

By Joshua Kirby

Unilever aims to save some 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) and secure steady sales growth as it focuses its business on a slimmer core of nonfood products.

The consumer-goods group behind Dove soap and Vaseline will outline plans at an investor event Wednesday to save 1 billion euros by the end of 2029 by recuperating some costs and overhauling operations.

The savings will come in part from addressing stranded costs arising from the separation of its food business, which it earlier this year agreed to combine with U.S. spices and condiments maker McCormick, creating a new entity majority owned by Unilever but separate from it. The group's ice-cream business has also been spun off and separately listed as Magnum Ice Cream Co.

Splitting from food will allow Unilever to focus on its beauty, personal-care and home products, the company said. "These categories share science and technology foundations, one demand creation model and common routes to market, providing opportunities to further focus resources and scale what works across Unilever's global footprint," the group said in a release Tuesday ahead of the investor event.

The group will report from now on across three business divisions, namely beauty & personal care, home care and "other," it said.

"Unilever is becoming a sharper, more focused HPC business," Chief Executive Officer Fernando Fernandez said, referring to the home and personal-care categories.

Unilever, meanwhile, said it aims to secure underlying sales growth of 4%-6% a year over the medium term, beginning next year, in line with existing multiyear guidance. That should include volume growth of at least 2% annually, Unilever said. Underlying operating margins should see "modest" improvement annually, the company said.

The targeted sales growth could yet prove tough to achieve, RBC Capital Markets' James Edwardes Jones warned. "Both the volume-growth target and organic sales-growth target strike us as challenging," he wrote in a note. Growth of 4% as a minimum is "already a demanding benchmark on a consistent basis," he cautioned.

As it slims down its business, the company said it is evolving its operating model to better allocate resources and leverage marketing and governance capabilities. The planned cost savings will also come from organizational simplification, process redesign and use of technology, Unilever said.

The company set out some leadership changes, with marketing chief Leandro Barreto taking on an additional role as chief growth officer, home-care president Eduardo Campanella becoming corporate-strategy officer and a president for North America to join from outside the company at the beginning of next year.

Write to Joshua Kirby at joshua.kirby@wsj.com; @joshualeokirby

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

November 03, 2026 12:24 ET (17:24 GMT)