The firm’s chief executive Paul Polman says, however, that ‘it would be very good’ if Britain were to remain in the EU

Unilever, the consumer goods group behind Persil and Magnum ice-creams, has said it will not scale back its UK operations if Britain votes to leave the EU.

The comments from Paul Polman, the chief executive of the Anglo-Dutch business, echo those of Akio Toyoda, his counterpart at Toyota, who said the Japanese carmaker would continue to produce cars in Derbyshire even if Britain left.

In an interview with the Guardian, Polman said Britain should remain in the EU, but that Unilever’s UK sites, including three research and development centres, would not be affected by a vote to leave. “The effectiveness of my research centre is the quality of the people I have there and the ideas coming out in terms of the innovations that we produce. We don’t make a decision on moving research centres around depending on if you are in the EU or not,” he said.

His comments will be a relief to Unilever’s 7,500 staff in the UK, but will also give hope to campaigners pushing for Britain to quit the EU, who argue that Brexit would not damage the country’s economic prospects or lead to significant job losses.

British-based businesses are drawing up battle lines over a referendum, with US investment banks and the retail grandee Sir Stuart Rose among those backing the campaign to stay in the EU, while the hedge fund owner Crispin Odey and the Phones4U founder, John Caudwell, are backing Brexit.



Polman added that the R&D Unilever carries out, including £80m a year invested in research and education by the Leverhulme Trust, underlined the company’s importance to the UK. It employs more than 170,000 globally and has a stock market value of £88bn. In the UK it operates from 18 sites, including seven factories.

“Unilever is in 190 countries in the world,” said Polman, a Dutch citizen. “I am in every country basically, in any trading zone, in the EU, out of the EU. People need to buy shampoo, people need to eat their Knorr or Cup-a-Soup, and they want to buy their Coleman’s and they want to buy their Magnum ice-cream. They are not going to say that is function of if I am in the EU or if I am not in the EU.

“We have investments in every country, because our business doesn’t lend itself too much to transport if you have detergents or fabrics softener or ice-cream. If there is a critical mass of population, which you happen to have here, then we invest anyway.”

Referring to the referendum, which could be held as soon as June, Polman said Britain was stronger as part of an “efficient trading bloc in Europe” and that it was “better to sit at the table to drive the changes than not to be invited to the table”. When asked whether Britain should quit the EU, he said: “No I don’t, I honestly don’t. I personally think it would be very good if Britain could stay.

“Britain came into the union, we shouldn’t forget that, when it had low economic growth. Britain got a lot of benefit from the union in terms of seeing its economic growth pick-up. Now people are questioning if that benefit is still there, but it would be good to remind ourselves where we were when we were not in.”



The debate over the economic merits of Britain’s EU membership heats up on Monday with the rival camps trumpeting research that backs their respective arguments. Lord Stuart Rose, the former chief executive of Marks & Spencer, will release analysis that shows the EU is worth an average of £670,000 in extra trade for each business that exports or imports goods within the trade bloc. Vote Leave, meanwhile, will seize on the findings of a study by think tank Civitas that claims the single market has had “no discernible benefit” for UK exports and has proved “not far short of a disaster” for Britain.

Polman added: “When the world is going towards more and bigger trading blocs, and the world is rapidly moving east and south as well, I think longer term we would better off as an efficient trading bloc in Europe.



“The discussion of being in and out of Europe should really rapidly move towards the advantages of being in or out, and what would it mean to be out. Because a Norwegian model or a Swiss model doesn’t address the refugee issue which seems to be a concern for some of the people.”

Unilever’s origins date back to 1885 when William and James Lever created Sunlight, the world’s first branded and packaged soap for washing clothes. Unilever was formed in 1930 when Lever Brothers merged with the Dutch margarine maker Margarine Unie. The company has corporate head offices in London and Rotterdam.