Last year, Fernando Fernandez, Unilever’s CEO, set out a strategy to refocus the group on beauty and wellbeing. The goal was to increase the combined share of the Beauty & Wellbeing and Personal Care divisions from roughly half of group sales to two-thirds.
Beauty & Wellbeing contributed €12.8bn in 2025, while Personal Care accounted for €13.2bn. Achieving the target would require an additional €15bn in sales from the existing portfolio. To reach that scale, the company has prioritised investment in the US and India, alongside a push into premium brands such as K18 and Hourglass.
The latest development, is Unilever confirming it received an offer for its food division from McCormick. The division recorded €12.9bn in sales last year, growing at 2.5%. Details regarding the scope of the offer remain unclear, but the direction is not as this follows last year’s separation of the ice cream unit, a pattern that reveals a company methodically carving away categories to reallocate capital.