Unilever has sold its Russian business to Arnest Group, it said on Thursday, following a “complex” sales process.
The owner of brands including Dove soap and Hellman’s mayonnaise is the latest multinational to exit Russia since its invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
UK-based Unilever said the sale includes all of its business and four factories in Russia as well as its business in Belarus.
While the terms of the transaction were not disclosed, the Financial Times reported that the sale was worth €520 million, citing unnamed sources.
Unilever, which declined to confirm the reported figure, had said that the Russian business, including the four factories, had net assets of around €600 million, as of 30 June.
'Complex'
The CEO of the company Hein Schumacher said in a statement, ‘This work has been very complex, and has involved separating IT platforms and supply chains, as well as migrating brands to Cyrillic,’ referring to the sale and translation from English to the Russian alphabet.
Arnest, headed by businessman Alexey Sagal, has scooped up other Western businesses since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most notably Dutch brewer Heineken’s Russian operations for just one euro.
Unilever’s continued presence in Russia following the invasion in 2022 has been criticised by campaigners and Ukraine’s government, though it was the first major European food company to stop imports into and exports out of Russia.
The company said last year said it could abandon, sell or retain its operations in Russia but the “least bad” option was to “pursue our business but in a highly constrained manner.”
The Kremlin usually demands a discount of at least 50% on exit deals involving firms from what it calls “unfriendly” countries, those that have imposed sanctions against Russia.
The exodus of firms from Russia has cost foreign companies more than $107 billion in writedowns and lost revenues, according to a Reuters analysis in March.
Danone earlier this year said it had received regulatory approvals to dispose of its Russian asset, taking a loss of $1.3 billion.
