Arnest acquires Unilever businesses in Russia and Belarus

Arnest Group has completed the acquisition of Unilever's businesses in Russia and Belarus. The transaction covers the seller's entire Russian business and four production sites. Financial terms were not disclosed, Interfax reported.

Manufacturing sites and commitments

The acquired sites are in Yekaterinburg, Omsk, St Petersburg and Tula.
Arnest president Alexey Sagal stated commitments to an investment programme and social obligations.

The buyer's announcement says the companies had cooperated for more than 17 years. Unilever spent a year preparing the business for sale, including separating IT platforms and supply chains and transferring brands into Cyrillic. The statement describes Arnest's business areas as cosmetics, aluminium beverage packaging and beverages.

The earlier contract-production partnership

In a separate statement dated 2 July 2019, Arnest described a tripartite agreement with Unilever and the Tula regional government signed at the June St Petersburg International Economic Forum. The parties intended to implement an export-oriented cosmetics and household-goods contract-production project in Novomoskovsk over three years. Arnest subsidiary Aerosol Novomoskovsk was the implementing company.

That agreement also envisaged studying recycled plastic or polyethylene for packaging Unilever-branded finished products at Aerosol Novomoskovsk. These were the partners' stated intentions in 2019.

The seller's preceding Russian-business figures

Interfax reported that Unilever had operated in Russia since 1991 and had around 3,000 employees there. For 2023, the Russian business represented approximately 1% of group turnover and net profit, while its assets were valued at €600 million at year-end.

The buyer's production background

In a separate 13 December 2023 factory-visit report, Arnest described three stages shown to journalists in Nevinnomyssk: aluminium-alloy casting and forming into aerosol-can blanks, manufacturing finished cans and filling them with prepared mixtures. Executive director Anatoly Desyatnichenko hosted the visit on 12 December. The account stated capacity of up to 14,000 tonnes or more than 500 million blanks annually, for internal use and deliveries to other domestic consumers.