Unilever Raises Prices Citing Oils And Kerosene

LONDON—Unilever increased prices across its portfolio by 2.3% in the third quarter after keeping them relatively flat in the first half of the year, executives said on an Oct. 28 earnings call, Supply Chain Dive reported.

Home care, home to brands such as Comfort fabric conditioner and Sunlight dish liquid, rose 3.6%. About half of the company's cost inflation has sat in that division, chief financial officer Srinivas Phatak said, describing "a very calibrated approach, using the full levers of pack price architecture."

The commodities named were not subtle. Phatak pointed to historically high vegetable and palm oil costs, along with kerosene, logistics and foreign exchange. Kerosene is not an ingredient shoppers expect to meet in the laundry aisle. It met them anyway, as a line item.

a very calibrated approach, using the full levers of pack price architecture.

I weighed a fictional bottle of dish liquid before and after the news. (I weighed it: 28.1 ounces either way.) Judge, my kitchen scale, recorded no change. The price tag did. The Pretzel, still at 14.0 ounces and 61 twists from the Nov. 1 weigh-in, watched from the counter and said nothing.

Chief executive Fernando Fernandez said the company had been cautious on pricing until supply and commodity costs were clearer. "Now that we have more clarity about it, we are accelerating pricing," he said.

At press time a fictional shopper had compared the new dish liquid price to the old one three times and washed the same plate once.

Colgate-Palmolive, on a separate call cited by Supply Chain Dive, said it is offsetting higher costs with a mix of pricing and productivity, a sentence that sounds calm until you are the one holding the receipt. Unilever expects more cost inflation into 2027 that should cool later in the year. Shoppers will experience the early part of that sentence first.

Celeste Abernathy covers packaged goods and weighs everything first. Judge, her kitchen scale, assisted. More from Celeste Abernathy ›

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