Unilever PLC

Unilever PLC
Quick Facts
Type	Public
sector	Consumer goods
Headquarters (Benelux Organization)	Rotterdam, Netherlands
Year of Origin	1930
Emissions (All Scopes)	61,2 Megatons of CO2 (2020)
Total Revenue	52 billion EUR
Stock Exchange	Bijv. Tokio, Amsterdam
Key People	Alan Joppe (CEO) Graeme Pitkethly (CFO) Nils Andersen (Chairman) Youngme Moon (Vice-Chairmain/Senior Independent Director)
Number of Employees	XXX
Subsidiaries	Unilever has over 400 brands worldwide

Unilever PLC

Unilever PLC is a British multinational consumer goods company, with its headquarters in London, United Kingdom. The company has over 400 household name brands, of which 81% are the top two in their market and 13 had a turnover of more than €1 billion in 2021. Unilever's products are sold in over 190 countries and are used by 3.4 billion people every day. Unilever is organized into three main divisions: Beauty & Personal Care, Foods & Refreshments, and Home Care. These divisions had a respective turnover of €21.9 billion, €20.0 billion, and €10.6 billion in 2021. The company has 148.000 employees and their turnover in 2021 was €52 billion.

Unilever Benelux

Unilever Benelux, stylized as Unilever, is a subsidiary of Unilever PLC, with its headquarters in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. The organizations of Unilever Netherlands and Unilever Belgium have been working together in a Benelux context since 2008. While Unilever Netherlands and Unilever Belgium continue to exist, the two companies have used their trade name Unilever Benelux from 2008 onwards, in view of the internal cooperation at the Benelux level. Unilever's turnover in the Benelux is approximately €1.5 billion.

Unilever Netherlands employs more than 2,500 people. Rotterdam is home not only to the Unilever Benelux office, but also to the company's International Corporate Center, which houses its European marketing and innovation hub. Unilever has a production facility in Hellendoorn, which produces ice cream. In December 2019, the new Unilever Foods Innovation Center (also known as HIVE) was opened in Wageningen. In HIVE, they work on "groundbreaking innovations and research to provide food for the growing world population in a sustainable and nutritious way".

The factories in the Netherlands and Belgium as well as Unilever Foods Innovation Center Wageningen and Unilever's international Corporate Center in Rotterdam are not part of the Unilever Benelux organization.

Company Structure

Board of Directors

Unilever Leadership Executive (ULE)

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Alan Jope	Chief Executive Officer	3,447
Graeme Pitkethly	Chief Financial Officer	2,961
Conny Braams	Chief Digital & Marketing Officer
Reginaldo Ecclissato	Chief Supply Chain Officer
Hanneke Faber	President, Foods & Refreshment
Sunny Jain	President, Beauty & Personal Care
Sanjiv Mehta	President, Unilever, South Asia and Chair and Managing Director, Hindustan Unilever
Nitin Paranjpe	Chief Operating Officer
Richard Slater	Chief Research & Development Officer
Ritva Sotamaa	Chief Legal Officer & Group Secretary
Peter ter Kulve	President, Home Care

Unilever Board

Name	Function	Remuneration x1000 EUR
Nils Andersen	Chair and Non-Executive Director	778
Andrea Jung	Vice_Chair and Senior Independent Director	135
Alan Jope	Chief Executive Officer
Graeme Pitkethly	Chief Financial Officer
Laura Cha	Non-Executive Director	134
Dr Judith Hartmann	Non-Executive Director	129
Adrian Hennah	Non-Executive Director
Susan Kilsby	Non-Executive Director	129
Ruby Lu	Non-Executive Director
Strive Masiyiwa	Non-Executive Director	138
Professor Youngme Moon	Non-Executive Director	168
John Rishton	Non-Executive Director	150
Feike Sijbesma	Non-Executive Director	138

Accountant

KPMG is Unilevers accountant since 2014.

Main Activities

Unilever has legally become an entirely British company. They own over 400 brands and are divided into three main divisions: Foods and Refreshments; Home Care; and Beauty & Personal Care. They were formed from a merger between Margarine Unie and Lever Brothers. They are listed on the London Stock Exchange and has a holding company named Unilever PLC and N.V. with an Anglo-Dutch structure. They did not receive the royal status. They also did not receive NOW support during Corona times.

Government

To what extent can the government influence company policy? (shareholder, licensing authority, client etc.) Has company received NOW support or royal status?

Paris Agreement to Today

Unilever has pledged to be carbon positive by 2030. This is how organisations describe climate positive and carbon negative. It's mainly a marketing term. Unilever has collaborations through international alliances. They have been experimenting with different forms of internal carbon pricing schemes, this is the concept of applying a cost to each tonne of carbon emitted. They will not finance assets within their operations which are inconsistent with achieving a 100% reduction in Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 2030. Scope 3 is not included in this measure. Unilever has pledged to halve their use of virgin plastic by 2025 and to design all their packaging to be fully reusable, recyclable or compostable.

Financial Results since 2015

This tabel is meant to indicate that the companies have plenty of money to make their company more sustainable. Clearly distinguish between Dutch data and international data.

Financial situation

Year	Revenue	Profit	Dividend
2015	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2016	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2017	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2018	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2019	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2020	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR
2021	XXX Billion EUR	XXX EUR	XXX EUR

Scandals and controversies

The Indian arm of Unilever (HUL) was forced to shut its thermometer factory in 2001 after authorities found the company was contaminating the environment by dumping tonnes of toxic waste . The same thermometer plant was already moved from New York to India in 1984 over environmental concerns. Although Unilever reached a financial settlement with a workers association of the defunk factory, the site was not decontaminated. In 2005 environmental activists launched a global campaign to force Unilever to clean the toxic waste. Unilever finally agreed to initiate pre-remediation work in 2009 and the cleansing of the site has yet to be completed .

In 2009 SOMO produced a report about more Unilevercontroversial practices. First about precarious and deteriorating working conditions for Pakistani Lipton Tea factory workers. Also about pressing issues at Unilever’s (Rainforest Alliance Certified) Tea Estates in Kenya

A 2019 audit of plastic waste by NGO GAIA revealed Unilever as the second worst pollutor in terms of collected plastic pollution in the Phillipines and she was number 7 in a global brand audit in 2018, which represented 239 cleanups spanning 42 countries. Despite the company claiming that it has reduced its overall waste footprint per consumer, Unilever's volume of single-use plastic and other packaging has remained the same since 2010 and so has her use of post-consumer recycled plastic . According to a 2020 report, Unilever’s pollution footprint amounts to 70,000 tonnes per year – covering more than 11 football pitches a day. Especially in developing countries, where waste often isn't properly managed but ends up being burned or dumped, packaging waste causes serious harm to the environment and people's health .

Sachets with laminates - such as Unilevers' shampoo sachets - are particularly harmful . These small sachets consist of three layers of different types of plastic which makes them difficult to recycle and therefore uninteresting to collectors. This type of disposable packaging was initially meant to make products accessible to country’s poorest inhabitants but the sachets have made their way into middle class bathrooms as well. Market analyst Euromonitor claims that in Asia over 70 per cent of all shampoo is now sold in sachets and Unilever’s Indian subsidiary alone sells some 27 billion sachets each year .

To meet their pledge about collecting more plastic than selling (achieving so-called "plastic neutrality") multinationals such as Unilever have started excavating landfills in developing countries, selling their invaluable contents to the cement industry for incineration as an alternative fuel. According to the Plastic Soup Foundation this is not a good development as it does not decrease multinationals' own production of plastic and does not motivate full recycling of the waste in these landfills, especially if the cement industry is made to be dependent on it.

Unilever was an early adopter of sustainability at a time when a uniform definition of the concept was lacking. This enabled the company to set the rules of the game before the authorities could by launching the Sustainable Living Plan and Sustainable Agricultural Code in 2010. Using their own guidelines, Unilever has increased their portofolio of products with 'sustainably grown' ingredients but in practice these norms are only marginally different from the norm applied in regular agriculture .

Current Emissions

GHG emissions by activity

Name	2020
Scope 1 (tonnes CO2e)	606.771
Scope 2 (tonnes CO2e)	171.906
Total Scope 1 and 2 (tonnes CO2e)	778.677
Total Scope 3 (tonnes CO2e)	60.388.592

As is shown above the GHG emissions from Scope 3 are extremely high. Therefore it is questionable that Unilever is mainly targeting the emissions that are from Scope 1 and 2. Especially considering the fact that ingredients and packaging contribute with 14.239.918 tonnes of CO2e. In their Annual Report they mention that they have reduced Scope 1 and 2 emissions from energy and refrigerant use by 60% since 2015 and they want to reduce Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 100% from their operations by 2030. The biggest problem however seems to be the emissions resulting from Scope 3. Still it appears as if the company has no concrete plans to reduce these emissions stemming from Scope 3.

Climate Policy and Plans

Unilevers climate plans include achieving net zero by 2039 across Scope 1, 2 and 3 emission. They plan on spending 1 billion EUR on climate and nature fund.The largest part of their emissions stems from their Scope 3 footprint. The measures they plan on taking are using 100% renewable grid electricity, which they achieved in January 2020. They also plan to transition to 100% renewable heat by 2030, halve the food waste in their operations by 2025, and align capital expenditure with their 1,5 degrees pathway.

Due Diligence

Keep the broader context in mind. Is the company integer when it comes to deforestation, palm oil, biodiversity, human rights etc etc? Be critical in the sources used here.

Conclusion

Unilever has admirable ambitions and some concrete plans. As it turns out however most of their emissions stem from their Scope 3 whereas most of their measures and plans are targeting Scope 1 and 2 emissions. For Unilever to achieve actual net zero and follow the 1,5 degrees pathway they must take their Scope 3 into more thorough consideration and revise their actions to achieve their goals.