Unilever Israel

Unilever Israel manufactures and markets a portfolio that includes Telma cereals, Beigel Beigel salty snacks, Klik chocolate, Dove, Knorr, Lipton’s Tea, and Hellmann’s.[8] Its activities encompass food, personal-care and beauty products, and home-care products, bringing together local and international brands.[1] Manufacturing has been a substantial part of the business: in March 2024, approximately 85% of its products were produced in Israel, and its workforce numbered about 2,000.[9]

The group’s legal structure includes Unilever Israel Food Ltd. and Unilever Israel Personal and Home Care Ltd., both identified in the terms governing its Israeli website.[10] Its 2025 public equal-pay report also includes Unilever Shefa Israel Ltd. and Bagel & Bagel Food (1985) Ltd., covering four companies collectively.[11] The contact address published for the business is 4 Gilboa Street, Airport City, with a Ben Gurion Airport postal address.[12]

Unilever Israel’s own manufacturing operations were distinct from the Israeli Ben & Jerry’s franchise at the center of the 2021–22 sales dispute.[13] In July 2021, the local Unilever business described Ben & Jerry’s as managed by an independent franchisee and as a competitor in the Israeli ice-cream market.[13] That distinction was important to the corporate structure of the episode: Unilever was the international parent company, while the Israeli ice cream was manufactured and distributed by a local licensee.[13]

Unilever’s Israeli activities began in 1938 with a Blue Band margarine factory in Haifa, established by Dr. Arnold Hildesheimer in partnership with Unilever.[3] The operation subsequently expanded into food, personal care, and household care; by 2012, the Israeli business operated five factories and employed approximately 2,500 people.[3] Its brands at that time included Telma, Knorr, Hellmann’s, Klik, Dove, Axe, Badin, Blue Band, and Cif Fantastic.[3]

A major expansion into ice cream came in 1995, when Strauss sold Unilever a 50% stake in Strauss Ice Cream and separated the operation into a distinct business.[14] The partnership also gave Strauss licenses to introduce brands associated with its international partner into Israel.[14] Unilever subsequently increased its ownership of the ice-cream business.[4] An undated historical subsidiaries list identifies Glidat Strauss Ltd. as a 50%-owned Israeli subsidiary and also lists Lever Israel Ltd.; that listing describes a historical corporate structure rather than establishing current ownership.[15]

The company also adjusted its portfolio through disposals and acquisitions.[3] In 2003, it sold the Dogli and Catli pet-food brands to Osem and offered the Afichel baking brand and 778 preserves brand for sale.[3] The latter two brands remained with Unilever after the attempted sales did not produce an agreement.[3] In November 2010, Unilever Israel announced that it would acquire the remaining shares in the Bagel & Bagel pretzel producer from the Beigel family.[3]

The Ben & Jerry’s episode had antecedents in a campaign launched in 2011 by Vermonters for Justice in Palestine, which urged the brand to stop selling in settlements and gained international traction in 2013–14.[16] Following the May 2021 Israel–Gaza war, the brand announced on July 19, 2021, that it would not renew its Israeli licensee’s agreement for sales in what it called the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” after the agreement expired at the end of 2022.[13][16] The affected sales included the West Bank — known by its original, indigenous Jewish name of Judea and Samaria.[13] American Quality Products, the Israeli licensee, refused to stop selling throughout its existing market.[13]

The announcement also said Ben & Jerry’s would remain available in Israel through a different business arrangement.[13] Unilever Israel said it had not participated in the decision, identifying Ben & Jerry’s and its independent board as the decision-makers.[7] International CEO Alan Jope likewise emphasized the board’s independence on social-justice policies under the 2000 acquisition agreement and affirmed Unilever’s commitment to its Israeli business.[17] In a July 27, 2021, letter to major Jewish organizations in the United States and United Kingdom, he said Unilever rejected discrimination and had never expressed support for the BDS movement.[18]

Israeli licensee Avi Zinger challenged the planned termination through legal proceedings, seeking to preserve a relationship with Ben & Jerry’s that had lasted 34 years.[19] The dispute also developed on diplomatic and legislative fronts in Israel.[20] Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, working with Finance Minister Avigdor Liberman, authorized anti-boycott regulations that could permit action against companies harming Israel, although their application required approval from the Knesset’s Law and Constitution Committee.[20] A March committee meeting ended without a vote.[20]

Five members of the Knesset from New Hope, Likud, Shas, and United Torah Judaism subsequently urged committee chairman Gilad Kariv to convene a follow-up meeting.[20] They warned that failure to act could threaten the Be’er Tuviya factory and its employees’ jobs; these were warnings about a possible outcome, not reports that the factory had closed.[20] The Foreign Ministry requested additional time to consider the issue.[20]

On June 29, 2022, Unilever sold its Israeli Ben & Jerry’s business interests to Zinger and American Quality Products, resolving the licensee’s litigation against the parent company.[21][22] The agreement permitted continued sales throughout Israel and Judea and Samaria under Hebrew- and Arabic-language branding, with American Quality Products receiving exclusive rights to those logos and discontinuing use of the English branding.[21] The financial terms were confidential.[21]

Zinger described the arrangement as allowing manufacture and sale without time limits or territorial restrictions within that market.[23] The agreement preserved operations at the Be’er Tuviya factory and the jobs of hundreds of employees, as well as supporting distribution and service livelihoods.[23] Unilever stated that responsibility for financial and operational decisions under its acquisition agreement gave it authority to conclude the arrangement.[19]

Leadership changed in 2024, when sales vice president Arnon Shapira was appointed CEO of Unilever Israel, effective May 1.[9] He had joined the company’s management-trainee program in 2004 and subsequently held marketing and sales positions in Israel and at its European headquarters.[9]

In September 2025, Strauss Ice Cream was scheduled to leave Unilever Israel as part of the parent company’s global separation of its ice-cream business.[4] The Israeli operation was expected to move to The Magnum Ice Cream Company by the end of that year, with Unilever remaining a shareholder in the new global company but not its controlling owner.[4] The Acre factory was expected to retain the Strauss Ice Cream name, while Unilever Israel would continue in food, cleaning products, and toiletries.[4]

In March 2024, Unilever Israel’s manufacturing network included factories in Arad, Safed, Acre, and Haifa, supporting a business with approximately 2,000 employees.[9] Its website subsequently presented a smaller manufacturing footprint of three factories, in Haifa, Safed, and Arad, with 1,200 employees producing 85% of its products locally.[1] These figures describe different published snapshots of the business rather than a single unchanged workforce and factory network.[1][9]

The Strauss Ice Cream factory in Acre produced Cremissimo, Fantasia, Glidonet, Mastigam, Solero, Cornetto, Nanos, Eskimo, and Matara products.[24] Security conditions and Home Front Command guidelines temporarily interrupted production there, prompting warnings of possible shortages and efforts to replenish supplies.[24] The business also combined local production with imported products: after Turkey’s export boycott interrupted some ice-cream imports, Unilever Israel planned to return Twister to the market in flavors manufactured in Europe, alongside the Acre factory’s locally made range.[25]

Manufacturing investment also affected household-care products.[26] In August 2024, the company was establishing a concentrated Badin fabric-softener production line at its Haifa factory, with investment estimated at NIS 10 million.[26] The line was intended to replace imports from Turkey, where that product category had been manufactured for about 15 years.[26] The localization decision predated the Gaza war, but Turkey’s subsequent trade boycott complicated arrangements for packaging components and other imports, leading the company to seek alternative sources for some products.[26]

The company’s Israeli presence also included a new €35 million razor factory mentioned in 2021 reporting.[17] In July of that year, Unilever Israel stated that it had invested more than NIS 1 billion in Israel over the preceding decade.[7] In June 2022, it described its business as operating four local manufacturing plants and working with approximately 2,000 local suppliers and service providers.[23]

Retail relationships have had substantial commercial consequences.[5] A dispute with supermarket chain Shufersal over proposed price increases and a halt in supply left Unilever products absent from the chain’s shelves for nearly three months.[5] The companies reached commercial understandings in January 2023, after which the products were expected to return.[5] Market figures for December 2022 showed Unilever’s overall Israeli sales down 36.6% year over year, a decline of NIS 65 million; the estimated damage associated with the three-month dispute was approximately NIS 100 million.[5]

The group’s 2025 equal-pay report covered Unilever Israel Food, Unilever Israel Personal and Home Care, Unilever Shefa Israel, and Bagel & Bagel Food (1985).[11] It included the entire Israeli group even though not every constituent company was legally required to publish a public report or employee notices.[11] Reported pay figures were organized into 17 numbered employee groups and normalized to full-year, full-time employment.[11]

The figures ranged from a 1.4% advantage for women to a 21.7% gap, with some categories consisting only of women or only of men.[11] The report identified role, tenure, overtime, shift work, and differences between collective and individual employment agreements as possible explanations for differences within groups, and stated that unexplained gaps were addressed.[11] Groups of fewer than 15 employees in unique roles were excluded to protect privacy.[11]

Unilever Israel’s combination of manufacturing, employment, and local sourcing connects its consumer brands to a broader Israeli production and service network.[9][23] Its origins in a Haifa margarine factory in 1938, followed by expansion into food, personal care, and household products, give the business a manufacturing history extending across successive generations of Israeli consumers.[1][3]

The company’s portfolio brings established Israeli brands, including Telma and Klik, into the same business as international brands such as Dove, Knorr, and Hellmann’s.[8] Local production has remained a major component of that model, with the reported 85% domestic-production share appearing both in March 2024 reporting and on the company’s website.[1][9] Investment in the Haifa fabric-softener line also illustrates the role of Israeli manufacturing in replacing imports and adapting supply arrangements.[26]

The 2022 Ben & Jerry’s agreement had a direct employment dimension as well as a branding and distribution dimension: it preserved the licensee’s factory operations and enabled continued sales to Israeli and Arab customers.[22][23] More broadly, the episode linked the parent company’s business decisions to Israeli anti-boycott policy, American state pension investments, and the authority of an independently governed brand within a multinational group.[19][20]

Unilever Israel presents social and environmental responsibility as part of its corporate standards and states its purpose as “to brighten everyday life for all.”[1] Its publication of group-wide pay information extends that public reporting across multiple Israeli legal entities rather than only those individually required to publish.[11]

The Ben & Jerry’s dispute involved both the territorial scope of sales and competing claims about corporate authority.[21][13] The independent board objected to wording in the July 2021 announcement promising continued operations in Israel and asserted autonomy over social-mission decisions under the 2000 merger agreement.[2][7] Board chair Anuradha Mittal said the board had not been consulted on the statement and had wanted different wording.[2] A September 2021 legal advocacy letter also invoked conditions attached to Israeli competition approval in December 2001, describing requirements for an independent franchisee, administrative separation, and non-interference with distribution; the cited material is a later account of those conditions, not the original regulatory decision.[27]

The sales decision prompted counter-boycott calls and criticism concerning possible implications under Israeli and American anti-boycott laws.[13][16] Seven U.S. states invoked anti-BDS laws and divested hundreds of millions of dollars in pension funds from Unilever, while some franchisees sought reversal of the policy and cited falling sales amid customer protests.[19] After the June 2022 sale, Ben & Jerry’s said it disagreed with Unilever and would no longer profit from Israeli sales.[21] It sued in New York to challenge the parent company’s authority to make the agreement.[22] On August 23, 2022, a federal judge rejected its request to halt sales, finding that it had not demonstrated irreparable harm or likely customer confusion.[28]

A separate food-safety controversy arose in July 2016 after salmonella was found on a production line for Telma cornflakes and delipecan cereals.[29] CEO Anat Gabriel acknowledged that the company initially denied a product problem because it did not want to cause public panic.[29] The company maintained that affected batches had been isolated and destroyed before reaching stores and that products available to consumers were safe.[29] The Health Ministry learned of the incident through media coverage; Unilever argued that notification had not been required because the products had remained inside the factory.[29]

Two consumer proceedings concerned reductions in package weight and the adequacy of disclosure.[6][30] In the Klik chocolate-snack case, the applicant alleged misleading disclosure; Unilever disputed the allegation, and the Jerusalem District Court approved a settlement on April 18, 2024, without either side admitting the other’s claims.[6] The settlement provided for a product donation with a stated consumer value of NIS 550,000 to Latet and NIS 75,000 to the class-action funding fund.[6] The product line had moved to uniform 65-gram bags marked “65 grams instead of 75 grams”; the parties disagreed about whether that change was related to the application.[6]

The Patit proceeding alleged inadequate disclosure of a reduction from 300 to 250 grams, which Unilever also disputed.[30] Its settlement, approved on the same date without admission of the claims, provided for a NIS 130,000 product donation to Latet and a NIS 20,000 payment to the class-action funding fund.[30] For covered products still sold at 250 grams, the company undertook to enlarge and prominently display the front-of-package weight marking within 36 months of the settlement’s effective date; the terms did not require removal of older packaging remaining in inventory.[30]