Lever Brothers

Lever House, New York City

Lever Brothers was a British manufacturing company founded in 1885 by brothers William Hesketh Lever (1851–1925) and James Darcy Lever (1854–1916). They invested in and successfully promoted a new soap-making process invented by chemist William Hough Watson. In 1930, Lever Brothers merged with Margarine Unie to form Unilever.

History

Starting with a small grocery business begun by his father, William Lever and his brother James entered the soap business in 1885 by buying a small soap works in Warrington. The brothers teamed up with a Bolton chemist, William Hough Watson, who became an early business partner. Watson invented the process which resulted in a new soap, using glycerin and vegetable oils such as palm oil, rather than tallow.[1] The resulting soap was a good, free-lathering soap, at first named Honey Soap then later named "Sunlight Soap". Production reached 450 tons per week by 1888. Larger premises were built on marshes at Bromborough Pool on the Wirral Peninsula at what became Port Sunlight.[2] Though the company was named Lever Brothers, William Lever's brother and co-director James never took a major part in running the business. He fell ill in 1895, probably as a result of diabetes, and resigned his directorship two years later.[3]

Employee welfare

Lever Brothers was one of several British companies that took an interest in the welfare of its employees.[4] The model village of Port Sunlight was developed between 1888 and 1914 adjoining the soap factory to accommodate the company's staff in good quality housing, with high architectural standards and many community facilities.

Brands

By 1900 "Lifebuoy", "Lux" and "Vim" brands had been added and subsidiaries had been set up in the United States, Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Germany and elsewhere. By 1911 the company had its own oil palm plantations in Belgian Congo and the Solomon Islands. Lever Brothers Ltd also acquired other soap companies including A&F Pears, Gossage's of Widnes, Watson's of Leeds, Crosfield's of Warrington, Hazlehurst & Sons of Runcorn and Hudson's of Liverpool. The town Leverville (the present-day Lusanga) was founded in the Bandundu district, named after William Lever.

Lever Brothers rode the cresting late-Victorian consumer revolution to build a vast worldwide industrial empire. Four years after William Lever's death in 1925, his enterprises were amalgamated as Unilever. By 1930, it employed 250,000 people and in terms of market value, was the largest company in Britain.[4]

Unilever

The company grew and operated until 1930, when it merged with a Dutch margarine company, Margarine Unie, to form Unilever, the first modern multinational company.[4] As part of the agreement, Lever Brothers changed its name to Unilever PLC, and forms the British half of the dual-listed company. Although the two companies have separate shareholders and stock exchange listings, they have a common board of directors and essentially operate as one company.

The Lever Brothers name was kept for a time as an imprint, as well as the name of the US subsidiary, Lever Brothers Company, and a Canadian subsidiary, Lever Brothers Limited. Lever Brothers was sold to a US capital firm Pensler Capital Corporation and renamed Korex in 2008. Korex Don Valley assumed operations of the Lever Brothers Toronto plant. It has since closed and gone bankrupt. The Toronto plant is now being redeveloped into an office and industrial district by First Gulf Corporation.[5]

Presidents of Lever Brothers

Among its presidents was Charles Luckman who in the 1950s championed the construction of the Lever House in New York City. Luckman left the company before the building's completion, moving on to a notable architectural career, including the design of Madison Square Garden, the Theme Building and master plan for Los Angeles International Airport, the Aon Center, and major buildings at the Kennedy Space Center and Johnson Space Center.[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Jeannifer Filly Sumayku, Unilever: Providing Enjoyable and Meaningful Life to Customers, The President Post, 22 March 2010
  2. ↑ "Unilever: A company history". BBC. 22 February 2000. Retrieved 9 July 2011.
  3. ↑ Macqueen, Adam (2005). The King of Sunlight: How William Lever Cleaned Up the World. Random House. p. 144. ISBN 978-0-552-15087-3.
  4. 1 2 3 Brian Lewis (2008). "So Clean": Lord Leverhulme, Soap and Civilization. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
  5. ↑ "Old soap factory getting a facelift". The Globe and Mail. Toronto. 1 February 2012. Retrieved 27 April 2015.
  6. ↑ Muschamp, Herbert (1999-01-28). "Charles Luckman, Architect Who Designed Penn Station's Replacement, Dies at 89". New York Times. Retrieved 2013-02-10.
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