Unilever is a British multinational consumer goods company. Unilever products include food, condiments, ice cream, wellbeing vitamins, minerals and supplements, tea, coffee, breakfast cereal, cleaning agents, water and air purifiers, pet food, toothpaste, beauty products, and personal care.
Unilever owns 8 large Russian enterprises, including a margarine factory in Moscow, a sauce factory, a tea-packing factory and a perfume and cosmetics factory in St. Petersburg, a food factory and an ice cream factory in Tula, as well as ice cream factories in Novosibirsk and Omsk. British firm producing Magnum and Cornetto is STILL selling ice creams in Russia despite their invasion of Ukraine. Unilever will let Russia employees be conscripted. "After looking at the situation in detail, it is clear that the containment actions we have taken minimise Unilever’s economic contribution to the Russian state." "However, I understand why there are calls for our company to leave the country and we continue to look at our options, within a context that has become more complex following recent regulatory developments in Russia." - Hein Schumacher. The rights to some of the Unilever brands in the Russian Federation, including Clean Line and Inmarko, were transferred to Unilever Rus LLC.
The company promised to suspend all imports and exports of its products into and out of Russia, and to stop all media and advertising spendings. Unilever also promised not to invest any further capital into the country nor to get profit from its presence in Russia. Unilever "will continue to supply essential food and hygiene products made in Russia to people in the country". Unilever flags risk it may have to halt Russia operations. As we see in 2023 - the company didn't met it promises, as its local entity in Russia (Unilever Rus LLC or ООО "Юнилевер Русь", tax id 7705183476) generated almost the same volume of local revenue in 2022 (RUB 84.9bn) vs RUB 86bn in 2021 or just 2% less. At the same time, its net profit increased from RUB 4.9bn to RUB 9.2bn or +91%! Also, due to this significant volume of profit, it was able to increase the local capital to RUB 34.5bn in 2022 from RUB 25.3bn in 2021 or +37%. It means that in fact the company reinvested the profit which is equal to investment of the new capital in the country. Moreover, the company will be obliged to pay profit tax (in addition to VAT, taxes from salary and other taxes) and indirectly support Russia's war machine in such a way. Unilever Rus LLC also paid the equivalent of $331mn of taxes in 2021 (and minimum the same amount in 2022 based on their financials). That's why we decided to change the company's status from "Scaling Back" one to "Continue Operations". The NACP added Unilever to the list of “International Sponsors of War”.