The Anglo–Dutch consumer products manufacturer Unilever is building a £24m “super factory” at Port Sunlight, its spiritual home on the Wirral.
Bigger than a football pitch, the conglomerate’s Advanced Manufacturing Centre will be attached its current research and development facility. The new building, scheduled for completion by 2016, is the latest in a series of investments Unilever has made at Port Sunlight.
It recently opened a global information technology hub on its Merseyside complex, staffed by 800 workers and designed to help it evaluate and respond to market developments. Work is already underway on a personal care products factory, slated for a 2015 opening. And Unilever has agreed a joint venture facility — the Materials Innovations Factory — to be built and shared with the University of Liverpool.
The new high-tech manufacturing factory will include a pilot plant, allowing scientists and engineers to test new personal and home care products in large quantities. It will also house replica equipment and be able to mimic conditions found in Unilever sites around the globe.
“Unilever has been in the manufacturing business for more than 125 years and this is the next step on that exciting journey,” explained Cameron Jones, Unilever Port Sunlight site leader. “This new centre creates a step-change in our ability to bring truly innovative products to market faster.”
Although Unilever is officially based at Blackfriars in London, its registered head office is still Port Sunlight where William Hesketh Lever and his brother James Darcy Lever opened the Lever Brothers soap factory in 1888.
The workers’ village of Port Sunlight (pictured) was constructed shortly after the factory’s opening and now contains 900 Grade II listed buildings. It was declared a Conservation Area in 1978. The original Sunlight detergent brand can still be found on sale in many countries around the world.
Unilever was founded in 1929 by the merger of Lever Brothers and the Dutch margarine producer Margarine Unie. In the decade after the millennium, its Port Sunlight research and development operations were relocated elsewhere, including to Ewloe in North Wales. The announcement of the Advanced Manufacturing Centre shows this trend is now firmly in reverse.
Its latest development was also been praised by Phil Davies, leader of Wirral Council. “This is fantastic news for Port Sunlight and the Wirral,” he said. “To have a global company such as Unilever decide to build a state of the art facility here demonstrates the Wirral can compete on the world stage and again shows Unilever’s ongoing commitment to the area.”
