Unilever exists because a soap maker and margarine maker fought over the same fat.
Soap and margarine are made from oils and fats, palm, coconut, even whale oil, so Britain’s Lever Brothers and the Netherlands’ Margarine Unie were bidding against each other for the same barrels. In 1929 the two merged instead and took a piece of each name. At birth, by one count, Unilever processed more than a third of the world’s commercial oils and fats.
Unilever on Brandseum