Boycott over Gaza hits Unilever's sales in Indonesia

Unilever makes Magnum and a huge range of other grocery items.

Unilever sales in Indonesia fell in the final three months of last year as consumers boycotted multinational brands in response to the war in Gaza.

Sales in the populous southeast Asian country dropped 15% during the period but Unilever, which makes Hellmann's, Domestos, Magnum, Sunsilk, Cif, and many other grocery items, said it had seen some improvement in January.

Shoppers in the Middle East as well as majority-Muslim nations like Pakistan and Indonesia are shunning big foreign brands, driven by anger against the US and Europe for not doing more to get Israel to end its offensive in Gaza, which has killed more than 25,000 people. 

The boycotts are a public relations nightmare for companies like Unilever, which had already fallen foul of tensions in the Middle East when it became engulfed in a row over selling Ben & Jerry’s ice-cream in the West Bank in 2022. Unilever has not taken a stance on the current conflict, although its ice cream subsidiary Ben & Jerry’s, which has a mandate to set its own social mission, has called for a ceasefire.

“As a company we operate in many geographies around the world, so we are not taking a stance on very complex matters,” chief executive Hein Schumacher told Bloomberg Television.

“You won’t see me doing that, you won’t see the company doing that.”

Unilever said Turkey, also majority Muslim, had delivered double-digit growth with all business groups increasing their volumes. Unilever said it sold more products overall for the first time in more than two years, as easing price inflation encouraged shoppers to buy more. 

Revenue grew 4.7% in the final quarter of 2023, just ahead of analysts’ estimates. Unilever is the first of Europe’s big food companies to report earnings this month, and its results may signal that consumers are ready to purchase more products again with the worst of inflation over. 

Bloomberg