Four innovations driving growth for our Home Care brands

In the UK, our home care brands are category leaders, with Cif, Persil, Surf, Comfort and Domestos all #1 in their categories.^[a]

What’s behind the success of our brands? Innovations that combine superior results with sensorial experiences, inspire the use of full cleaning and laundry regimes and create desire and excitement in everyday home care moments.

Here’s four ways we’re ahead of the biggest trends in Home Care.

Laundry in a flash: The rise of short cycle solutions

Last year we launched Persil Wonder Wash™, a laundry detergent designed for wash cycles as short as 15 minutes, to respond to rapidly growing demand, with 68% of shoppers using a short-cycle once a week^[b] as they look to reduce the amount of time they spend on laundry.

Since its 2024 launch, Persil Wonder Wash has reached 9%^[c] of UK households with a third of users repurchasing the product. The innovation was ranked the number one UK NPD in 2024^[c] and recently helped Persil win Household Goods Brand of the Year at The Grocer Gold Awards 2025.

Building on this momentum, we’re continuing to invest in this segment with a multi-year innovation plan for the short-cycle segment by introducing Persil Wonder Wash Dazzling White, Persil Wonder Wash Sensitive Non Bio and extending the range to our Surf brand with Surf Magnifi-Scent Wash.

Catering to sensitive skin

With non bio detergents now making up 40% of the laundry aisle, products that are gentle next to sensitive skin will be a key driver of future growth. However, fragrance continues to be a key purchase driver, creating an opportunity for sensitive products that don’t compromise on scent.

Our new Pure Heaven Scent collection from Persil and Comfort is our first complete laundry solution – with detergent, capsules, conditioners and scent boosters available. The innovations utilise a non-biological formulation with a delicate scent, which is dermatologist-recommended through the Skin Health Alliance.

As part of our social-first marketing, the launch of Pure Heaven Scent has been fronted by one of the UK’s most successful influencers and mum, Molly-Mae Hague. As a mother with sensitive skin who values added fragrance in her home and laundry, Molly-Mae is the perfect ambassador to share this innovation, in an authentic way, at scale. Known for her significant social media presence, Molly-Mae has amassed over 14m followers across her social channels and, alongside her young daughter, featured at various touchpoints in our multimillion-pound media campaign across social and in-store activations.

The power of probiotics in the home

Cif Infinite Clean is the brand’s biggest innovation in over a decade, which aims to change the way shoppers think about cleaning their homes.

In a first for Unilever UK, this new cleaning product features pioneering bioscience and patent-pending probiotic technology to keep homes cleaner for longer. The probiotic activates on dirty surfaces, feeding on grime and continuing to target dirt after the spray has been used, reaching hard-to-clean areas for a thorough clean that lasts up to three days.

Its continuous mist trigger offers a premium experience and delivers the probiotic cleaner evenly across all surfaces. The product is available in a ‘reload’ format, allowing shoppers to reuse the trigger and reduce plastic waste by 50%, compared to purchasing a new trigger spray each time.

Carton packaging: a step towards using less plastic for liquids

We’re also making some changes to our Home Care packaging this year. Good packaging is vital to get our products safely and efficiently into the hands of shoppers. But too much plastic is ending up in the environment and we’re determined to change this.

Carton packaging has long been used to package food products, such as milk, fruit juices and soups. Historically, this packaging was not widely collected for recycling. However, this is changing in the UK, with many UK local authorities^[d] now collecting and recycling cartons at kerbside.

That’s why we’re now providing UK shoppers the option of purchasing three of our laundry brands, Persil, Comfort and Surf in cartons, as an alternative to plastic bottles. These carton packs contain 80% less plastic vs the comparable plastic bottle, making it an appealing solution to reducing plastic usage.