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Business of Food & Beverage

Unilever 2025: ‘Doing Fewer Things Better and With Greater Impact’

Dec. 5, 2024

At its late-November investor event, executives said the ice cream spinoff is on track, and more than $1 billion in small brands will be disposed of, allowing more innovation on the core.

Dave Fusaro

“Doing fewer things better and with greater impact,” will be the theme at Unilever for 2025. That includes not just the planned spinoff of the ice cream business but also the disposal of more than $1 billion in small brands and products in the next 12-24 months.

That will allow the company to focus on its newly defined core and to accelerate true innovation, according to company executives speaking at their Nov. 22 end-of-year investor event.

“From the moment I arrived, I felt our innovation delivery was not matching the strength of our brands or the quality we have in our R&D,” said Hein Schumacher, who has been CEO since July 2023. “And I feel that is changing.

“We want to build on an annual basis 10 to 15 platforms, each generating about 100 million euros of incremental turnover over time. And we want to double the average size of innovation with the base year of 2021.”

Schumacher also noted that most of the company’s businesses and brands have returned to volume growth.

The “fewer things” part of the philosophy will start with the separation of the ice cream business, which is well underway. But “don’t underestimate the complexity of the process,” warned Fernando Fernandez, who became chief financial officer in January 2024. “We need to create 80-plus legal entities and tax models,” among the complexities. He predicted the separation will “be ready” by July 1 of 2025, although it will take till the end of next year to fully separate the business.

He noted the ice cream business has seen a 4% increase in volume in the past nine months, has some billion-dollar brands and should do well on its own. He also referred to recent stories about “plans being shelved” to sell the unit to private equity investors by saying “those never were our plans.”

Fernandez said the company will “further simplify” the remaining food businesses by disposing of “around 1 billion [euros] in smaller brands, local brands, most in Europe” in the next 12-24 months. “It will not be a fire sale,” he cautioned.

About the Author

Dave Fusaro | Editor in Chief

Dave Fusaro has served as editor in chief of Food Processing magazine since 2003. Dave has 30 years experience in food & beverage industry journalism and has won several national ASBPE writing awards for his Food Processing stories. Dave has been interviewed on CNN, quoted in national newspapers and he authored a 200-page market research report on the milk industry. Formerly an award-winning newspaper reporter who specialized in business writing, he holds a BA in journalism from Marquette University. Prior to joining Food Processing, Dave was Editor-In-Chief of Dairy Foods and was Managing Editor of Prepared Foods.