Lever Brothers

Gamble Company, Colgate-Palmohve Company, and Lever Brothers Company. Elf Atochem North America is the sole U.S. producer of ... 

This work has been carried out under a grant from the National Science Foxindation (ENG TT-OT l) along with funds from the Industrial Liaison Program of the EPI. One of us (D.N.) has also received partial support from a Lever Brothers Company Foxindation Fellowship. 

Lever Brothers, since it had to decide how to obtain the sodium citrate, had another host of alternatives to consider. It could produce or buy the product. If it chose to produce the builder, it could purchase the process from another firm or it could develop its own process. It could make the product from basic raw materials or from intermediate compounds. If it decided to let some other firm be the producer, it could buy the material on the open market or enter into a long-term agreement with another company. It might even do both by forming a joint company, such as Dow Coming, that would manufacture the builder. It could even buy a company that was currently producing it. All these possibilities must be economically evaluated to determine the best course of action to take. 

Dove Beauty Bar was developed by Lever Brothers Co., a subsidiary of Unilever in the United States, in the 1950 s. It has had an unusual product lifecycle in that it had a minor share of the U.S. soap market for over 25 years, after which it suddenly underwent a major expansion of market share, becoming the largest selling cleansing bar in the U.S. (as measured by dollar sales) [1,2],... 

As a historical note, SAI for Dove was made by this acyl chloride process until a commercial process for direct esterification of fatty acid and sodium isethionate was developed by Lever Brothers Co. in the late 1950 s. The SAI made by direct esterification is generally termed DEFI, an acronym for directly esterified fatty isethionate . The DEFI reaction is follows ... 

In principle, the iterative experimental approach one would take today is no different than the one pursued by the product developers at Lever Brothers Co. in the early 1950 s, though possibly accumulated data about surfactants, fatty acids, and soaps in the public domain might make ingredient selection some-... 

The authors are grateful to Dr. M. Aronson and Dr. E. D. Goddard for helpful discussions. D. L. C. also wishes to thank Lever Brothers Company and the Gillette Corporation for their financial support. 

Professor K. S. Birdi received his BSc (Hons) in chemistry from Delhi University in 1952, and then later traveled to the United States for further studies, majoring in chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley. After graduation in 1957, he went to Standard Oil of California, Richmond. Dr. Birdi moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1959, where he joined the Lever Brothers Development Laboratory in 1959 as chief chemist. During this period, he became interested in surface and colloid chemistry and joined the Institute of Physical Chemistry (founded by Professor... 

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