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Unilever is exploring a sale of its healthy snack brand Graze, as the consumer group’s new chief presses ahead with plans to tilt its portfolio away from food and towards personal care and beauty.
The maker of Dove soap and Marmite has recently approached a number of consumer goods groups and food manufacturers to gauge their interest in buying Graze, according to people familiar with the matter.
One banker estimated that Graze, which Unilever bought for £150mn in 2019, would be valued at between £50mn and £80mn in a sale. Unilever declined to comment.
Graze made £40mn in revenues in 2023, a drop of 11 per cent year on year, according to its most recent set of published accounts. That compares with annual revenue of £55.9mn in the year prior to being acquired by Unilever. The brand, which sells oat bars and packets of roasted corn, blamed the recent decline on a slowdown in its direct-to-consumer sales.
Graze has made an operating loss every year under Unilever’s ownership, according to accounts filed at UK Companies House.
Unilever promoted its chief financial officer, Fernando Fernandez, to chief executive in March, abruptly replacing Hein Schumacher, who had planned to sell food brands generating a total of €1bn of annual revenue as part of his turnaround efforts.
Fernandez is continuing with his predecessor’s plans as part of a shift in focus to higher margin beauty, personal care and health and wellness categories.
In the past six months Unilever has sold Dutch brands Conimex and Unox, as well as plant-based brand The Vegetarian Butcher.
Graze, which Unilever acquired from private equity group Carlyle, was founded in 2005 as a snack box delivery service, before starting to supply supermarkets and other retailers in 2015. Unilever integrated Graze into its wider operations last year.
Unilever bought the brand as part of a push into direct-to-consumer selling, which included the $1bn acquisition of subscription razor service Dollar Shave Club, and to meet growing consumer demand for healthier snacks.
But the potential sale of Graze is another sign that betting on subscription businesses has failed to pay off for the FTSE 100 company, which sold Dollar Shave Club in 2023 after struggling to integrate it into the group.
However, Unilever acquired premium cosmetics brand Wild in April, which sells its products through its own retail channels as well as third-party stores.
The Anglo-Dutch group has previously considered separating its entire food division, which generated €13.4bn of its €60.8bn annual revenue last year.
Fernandez has not ruled out a separation but has said its two leading food brands, Hellmann’s and Knorr, which make up 60 per cent of the division’s sales, were margin accretive and that the food business was still attractive overall.
Unilever has previously spun off its tea business and its margarine business. The company is preparing to spin off its ice cream division, which is due to list in the Netherlands later this year.
