Unilever moots merger of Elida Gibbs and Lever Bros

Unilever is understood to be planning to merge its Elida Gibbs and Lever Brother’s operations after Elida Gibbs relocates its headquarters to Lever House in Kingston, Surrey.

The lease on Elida Gibbs’ current head office at Portman Square, London runs out at the end of this year and the toiletries and cosmetics operation will relocate in the new year.

Although the companies will exist as separate brands, it is understood that a single board will operate in the UK to administer the divisions.

Elida Gibbs has toiletries and personal care brands such as Pond’s, Timotei, Impulse and All Clear.

Lever Brother’s handles brands such as Lux and Dove in addition to detergent brands Persil, Surf, Radion and cleaning product Jif.

A spokesman for Unilever says that in some countries Elida Gibbs and Lever already work much closer than they do in the UK.

Unilever in this country merged its two subsidiaries, Brooke Bond Foods and Van den Bergh Foods, in January this year as part of a 490m restructuring programme.

The spokesman adds that he is unaware of any plan to merge the two divisions.

However, he confirms that the entire operations at the Elida Gibbs headquarters are relocating at the start of 1996.

Unilever’s pre-tax profits for the year to September were up nine per cent at 1.9bn, on sales six per cent higher at 23bn.

Recommended

Somerfield roll out new store design

Marketing Week

Somerfield is following the lead of supermarket giants Tesco, Safeway and Sainsbury’s by rolling out its new-look stores to improve customer service. The chain is rebranding 620 Gateway stores under the Somerfield name. So far, 20 Gateway stores have been converted to Somerfield with the new format. Somerfield marketing director David Coles, who joined the […]

Shouting the praises of sanpro ads

Marketing Week

While applauding the request by Lynn Ross for more sublety in sanpro TV advertising, I have to ask the question, where has she been for the past 12 moonths? In that time, Lil-lets, the leading non-applicator tampon, has re-launched and at the same time in- troduced a new applicator variant and increased overall house share […]

Tapping a valuable commodity

Marketing Week

As more companies adopt database marketing techniques to tailor their goods and services to consumer needs, so, in turn, consumer information will become more valuable. Alan Mitchell predicts that customers