Unilever completes £150 million investment in Port Sunlight

“This investment is a strong vote of confidence in our region as a place where global businesses can grow, innovate and create opportunity. It will help support high-quality jobs, apprenticeships and skills for local people, while strengthening our position as a leader in advanced manufacturing and R&D.

“Just as importantly, this new facility shows how economic growth and sustainability can go hand in hand. By cutting hundreds of lorry journeys from our roads each week, Unilever is supporting our target to reach net zero by 2035, improve air quality for local people, and support ambitions for a cleaner, greener city region.”

New investment in Port Sunlight’s laundry capsule factory will increase laundry capsule production three-fold while enabling the manufacture of smaller, more complex capsule formats. This supports the launch of Persil’s new advanced four-chamber capsules which feature new powerful cleaning technologies, developed at Unilever’s R&D labs in Port Sunlight.

The new distribution centre connects directly to the factories on site and will reduce the requirement for lorries to move goods between the factories and distribution centres in other locations, delivering sustainability and safety benefits. Spanning 10,000 m2, it is powered by 2,000m of automated conveyors and eight giant (30m high) stacking cranes, handling up to 17,000 pallets, equating to 13,600 tonnes of product, each week.

By taking hundreds of lorries off the road each week, it will deliver a significant estimated 27% reduction in primary logistics – the lorries that transport Unilever products from factory to warehouse – saving an associated 827 tonnes of CO₂ emissions. It is powered by 100% renewable energy, with solar panels, heat pumps and solar reflectance painting.

Lee Mawson, Head of Customer Operations, Unilever UK and Ireland said; “This is a big step forward for us in our UK and European supply chain. The distribution centre will boost capacity, efficiency and service levels for our retail customers, improving product availability and enabling direct dispatch to retailers in the UK and a number of European markets.”

Madeleine McLeod, Factory Director for Port Sunlight Home Care, said: “The investment completion we are announcing today makes us future-fit, boosting our capacity and efficiency as we roll out our latest home care innovations.

“Port Sunlight represents Unilever’s proud manufacturing heritage in the North-West — a heritage we are taking forward with our talented workforce, supported by the latest in high-tech automation and cutting-edge technology.”