Unilever Caribbean Ltd (UCL) is mov­ing full steam ahead with its strate­gic piv­ot to­ward beau­ty and per­son­al care, fol­low­ing its de­ci­sion to ex­it the de­clin­ing laun­dry pow­der seg­ment.

In a no­tice on the T&T Stock Ex­change last week, Unilever PLC an­nounced its de­ci­sion to di­vest its laun­dry busi­ness in the Caribbean and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. UCL’s board of di­rec­tors sub­se­quent­ly ap­proved an ap­pli­ca­tion to the Fair Trad­ing Com­mis­sion to meet lo­cal reg­u­la­to­ry re­quire­ments for the pro­posed trans­fer of the brands.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor Ginelle Lam­bie con­firmed in a news re­lease that the com­pa­ny will pri­ori­tise high-per­form­ing glob­al brands such as Vase­line, De­gree, Dove, TRE­Sem­mé, and Axe prod­ucts that al­ready ac­count for the ma­jor­i­ty of UCL’s rev­enues and are grow­ing at dou­ble-dig­it rates.

“This is where the fu­ture lies for us,” Lam­bie said, high­light­ing that the seg­ment con­tin­ues to de­liv­er strong in­no­va­tion and prof­itabil­i­ty.

Lam­bie said re­cent launch­es un­der­score the com­pa­ny’s new di­rec­tion. Vase­line Ra­di­ant X, de­vel­oped for melanin-rich skin in the Caribbean, and De­gree Whole Body De­odor­ant, de­signed for the re­gion’s hot cli­mate, have both record­ed ro­bust ear­ly per­for­mance. Lam­bie not­ed that tech­nol­o­gy-dri­ven, pur­pose-led in­no­va­tion will be the foun­da­tion of UCL’s growth strat­e­gy go­ing for­ward.

The com­pa­ny ac­knowl­edged that its laun­dry pow­der brands have faced years of head­winds, with the seg­ment plagued by heavy com­modi­ti­sa­tion and price pres­sure across the re­gion. De­spite pric­ing ad­just­ments and prod­uct up­dates, rev­enue for the cat­e­go­ry has de­clined con­sis­tent­ly over the past five years, with prof­its turn­ing neg­a­tive.

By con­trast, beau­ty and per­son­al care has de­liv­ered year-on-year rev­enue growth, stronger mar­gins and sus­tained con­sumer de­mand. Ac­cord­ing to UCL, this makes it a clear pri­or­i­ty for in­vest­ment and re­source al­lo­ca­tion.

Lam­bie stressed that while the com­pa­ny is shift­ing its port­fo­lio, its com­mit­ment to T&T re­mains un­changed. “UCL has been part of this mar­ket since 1929. We re­main deeply in­vest­ed in our con­sumers, our com­mu­ni­ties, and our share­hold­ers,” she said.

“This tran­si­tion is about en­sur­ing long-term sus­tain­able growth while con­tin­u­ing to de­liv­er the trust­ed, high-qual­i­ty brands our con­sumers know and val­ue.”