The company Unilever Rus (former division of Unilever in Russia), bought by the Arnest group in October, approved an investment plan for the period 2024-2026. The latter will invest at least 7 billion rubles in Unilever Rus, writes Vedomosti citing a statement by the owner and president of Arnest, Alexei Sagal.
Author:
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It is planned to resume exports of products and invest in expanding production and marketing. According to Sagal, the company “sees many opportunities” to scale the business and increase utilization of capacity, which has been partially idle since 2022.
Unilever Rus has four factories in Yekaterinburg, St. Petersburg, Tula and Omsk. Its load, according to Sagal, is 50 to 60%. To ensure its full utilization, Arnest and Unilever Rus decided to develop contract manufacturing. It is also planned to expand staff by at least 10%; Currently there are around 3 thousand people.
“In terms of export development, the company is interested in the countries of Central Asia and the Asia-Pacific region. But we will not limit ourselves only to them,” said Sagal.
The resumption of exports, in his words, will come at the expense of Russian brands. As of February 2022, about a quarter of products produced at Unilever factories in Russia were shipped abroad.
According to Elena Tyabutova, CEO of Unilever Rus, there are no plans to expand the portfolio of own brands. Now there are about 40 of them: “Clean Line”, “Velvet Handles”, “Black Pearl”, “Forest Balsam”, “Dove”, “Clear”, “Ax”, “Rexona”, “Sif”, “Domestos ”and others.
In early October, Unilever completed the sale of the Russian and Belarusian business to cosmetics and household chemicals manufacturer Arnest. The company completely sold its business in Russia for 520 million euros.
The Arnest Packaging Solutions company (part of the Arnest group of companies) decided to invest $100 million in 2025 in the construction of a plant for the production of aluminum cans in Uzbekistan. This will be the company’s first venture outside of Russia.
Author:
Nikolai Tikhonov
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
