History of Sime Darby Unimills

The story begins a century ago. At that time two companies, one called Van den Berghs, the other Jurgens started manufacturing margarine. In 1915 Jurgens began a new oil refinery with a capacity of 400 tons a week at Zwijndrecht.

In 1927 Van den Bergh and Jurgens decided to merge its activities on margarine and oil refinery. The result: the N.V. Maatschappij der Vereenigde Oliefabrieken (MVO) at Zwijndrecht and the Margarine Union.

In 1929 there was a new merger. From the Dutch Margarine Union, the English Margarine Union and Lever Brothers Ltd, ‘Lever Brothers & Unilever was founded. This merger was later renamed in Unilever N.V. The N.V. Maatschappij der Vereenigde Oliefabrieken at Zwijndrecht became a subsidiary of Unilever N.V.

Rapid modernization took place between 1965 and 1980 where most labour-intensive task was replaced with automation. In the 1970’s MVO was assigned to be part of the German division of Unilever and as a result, a more international name – Unimills BV- was created to replace its old name.

Unimills became a full-fledged refinery in the 90’s when Unilever rationalized its margarine business. The group invested in Unimills into a high capacity refinery thus making it the second largest refinery in Europe with state-of-the-art oil modification technologies such as interesterification, blending, hardening and fractionation.

In 2001, Golden Hope Plantations Berhard from Malaysia, was looking for expanding its oversees activities. In January the following year, Unimills was becoming part of Golden Hope Group.

In 2007 Golden Hope Hope merged with Sime Darby and Guthrie. The new entity will continue under the name Sime Darby. Unimills is now part of the Sime Darby Group.

In October 2010 Unimills changes her name to Sime Darby Unimills BV.