Groot Brittanië, Van den Berghs Limited, Certificate of 6% cumulative preference stock, 100 Pounds, 13 October 1935

Simon Van den Bergh was born in 1819 in Geffen in the Netherlands. He entered his father's barber trade at an early age. Later he specialised as a butter merchant and with his seven sons- Jacob, Mauritz, Henry, Zadok, Izak, Arnald and Samuel built a thriving butter trade from the village of Oss in Brabant. Simon extended his trade to England but came to financial difficulty. Consequentially, in 1870 Jacob and Henry Van den Bergh were sent by their father to London to look after the company's interests there. The invention of the butter substitute margarine- made from animal fat, changed the family's fortunes. Their rivals, the Jurgens family had obtained the formula for margarine from its inventor Mege Mouries. Jan Jurgens visited Simon Van den Bergh with a sample of the new product. Simon commissioned Daniel Hipkins to develop a similar product for Van den Bergh. Soon they overtook Jurgens in both production and profits. The development of hydrogenation, a technique for hardening vegetable oils made it possible to use a wide range of raw materials, not just animal fat. In 1891 the Van den Bergh left Oss and moved to their new headquarters in Rotterdam. As their business expanded in the late 19th century, the Van den Bergh family's resources were running low and avenues of financial backing in the Netherlands had already been exhausted. It was easier to raise capital in London and so in 1895 Van den Bergh established a public limited company, Margarine Ltd, in the UK.The old partnership was sold to this new company which was called Van den Bergh's Margarine Limited (although the "Margarine" was dropped after two years when the company changed its name to Van den Berghs Limited on 29 May 1897). The English business acted as a holding company for the family's business interests everywhere. The Van den Berghs did not have to relinquish any influence as they owned the ordinary shares. £450, 000 worth of preference shares were issued to the general public and two English directors were appointed to watch over their interests. As managing directors and majority shareholders in the new company, the Van den Berghs preserved the original partners' control of the capital and management of the business. Van den Bergh first launched their branded margarine on the German market with Vitello in 1898 , which was manufactured from animal fats, and whose superior quality to its competitors ensured its rapid success. It was soon joined by Sanella, made from animal fats and almond oil, and a Kosher margarine, Sana, in 1899. Blue Band was launched in the UK in 1916, but not until 1923 in the Netherlands and was unusual for the time because it was made entirely from vegetables and ground nut oils. Van den Bergh used Coppens, an Amsterdam advertising agency that was influenced by English and American techniques, to promote Blue Band. It rapidly became the most popular margarine brand in The Netherlands. Van den Bergh's progress in England had been rapid before 1906, when the raw materials crisis combined with plentiful butter supplies to badly affect the margarine industry in both England and the Netherlands. This combined with the 1908 Agreement that meant the recipe responsible for the superior quality of their product was made available to Jurgens, lead to a period of disappointing progress for Van den Berghs. In England the company faced another problem. London accounted for half of Van den Bergh's sales in England and the London trade was largely wholesale, but under the onslaught of shop companies, in particular Maypole, the position of the wholesaler became increasingly difficult. Consequentially Van den Bergh's took a blow in 1912 when they permanently lost the Home and Colonial contract. In 1919 the Van den Berghs founded Van den Bergh's Fabrieken NV in Rotterdam, to which the continental interests of Van den Bergh were transferred. The members of the Dutch side of the family exchanged their Van den Bergh Limited shares for shares in the NV company. Van den Berghs Limited and Van den Bergh's Fabrieken NV together then headed the Van den Bergh group. These two companies, along with a third, NV Hollandsche Vereeniging tot Exploitate van Margarinefabrieken, whose entire ordinary capital was held by NV Van den Bergh's Fabrieken, made an agreement that a ratio would be maintained between the dividends on the three companies' shares, and between any payment or liquidation. By creating and incorporating two parent companies, one in England and one in The Netherlands, Van den Bergh avoided problems such as double taxation. This arrangement set the precedent for the subsequent structure of the Margarine Union and, consequently, Unilever. Van den Berghs recovered from its slump. In 1914 partly due to social and economic factors, the demand for margarine had increased hugely; In England wages were stationary and the working classes who couldn't afford butter turned to margarine, and in Germany butter production could not meet demand due to the rapid growth in urban population, so people turned to the alternative. In both countries Van den Bergh's continued to stimulate public interest in margarine by a process of education and inducement, advertising and gift schemes. Consequentially in this year Van den Bergh production increased from about 32,000 tons per year to around 70,000 tons. To ensure access to raw materials needed to meet increasing demand, in 1910 Van den Bergh formed a syndicate for palm oil cultivation with Jurgens. Between 1918 and 1919 the company acquired raw material from Nigeria and Ceylon. In Holland in 1927 the company processed raw materials in one plant, opened 1912, in Germany they had six business concerned with processing raw material, and in both France and England they had three. At this time Van den Berghs had manufactured detergents and toilet soap in Rotterdam since 1896, and in Paris since 1906. In 1927 the manufacture of edible fats and oils was taking place in England where Van den Berghs had over 8 businesses concerned with fats and oil manufacture, Holland where they had over 7, Germany when they has some 16 businesses. Other European countries where manufacturing was taking place included Belgium where fats and oils had been manufactured since 1895, France since 1921, Italy since 1924, Denmark since 1918, Sweden since 1918, Norway since 1925, Finland and Danzig sometime after 1918. In 1927 the four main Van den Bergh brands were Sana, Sanella, Vitello and Blue Band. In this year Van den Bergh produced 39,370 tons of Margarine in Holland, 98,425 tons in Germany and 54,134 tons in England. In November 1927 the two companies Van den Berghs and Jurgens agreed to merge to form a new organization. This consisted of two holding companies, a Dutch company called Margarine Unie NV, and an English company called the Margarine Union Ltd, for taxation and administrative purposes, and two holding companies were formed having the same Board of Directors, one in England and one in Holland. This was followed almost immediately by an Equalization Agreement regarding the dividends and capital values, profits of each company be distributed to the shareholders in dividends of equal value, and that capital value on liquidation also be equal. The merger resulted in the elimination of competition between the two parties, reduced costs and increased profits, and thus the capital expansion of the new concern went on at an unprecedented rate. In September 1928 an alliance was made with Calve-Delft who were involved in oil milling, margarine and soap. This was followed in January 1929 with the inclusion of Hartogs of Oss. By the end of 1928 the Union also included Centra and Schichts After much negotiation at the beginning of which was discussed the possibility of Lever shedding its margarine interests and the Union shedding its soap interests, a form of unity was instead decided on. The agreement signed on 29 September 1929 provided for two holding companies, one English and one Dutch, on the model of the two Union/Unie holding companies. These would have identical Boards and would continue the Equalization Agreement concerning dividends and capital values. These holding companies were to be known as Unilever Limited and Unilever N.V. Unilever was created on the 1st January 1930.