Ben & Jerry’s Parent Company to Spin Off Ice Cream Brand after Clashes over Chairman’s Anti-Israel Stance

Unilever is freezing itself out of the ice cream business and selling Ben & Jerry’s after the two companies clashed over Israel.

The company said on Tuesday that the ice cream division of Unilever will become a separate business 100 years after Unilever first began selling ice cream. Magnum, Klondike, Wall’s, and Breyers are among the brands included in Unilever’s ice cream portfolio, which generated $8.6 billion in revenue last year.

In recent years, Ben & Jerry’s has become known for its progressive activism as much as its assortment of ice cream flavors. The company strongly supported defunding the police during the Black Lives Matter riots in the summer of 2020 and continues to promote left-wing racial ideology. In addition, Ben & Jerry’s has taken left-wing stances on the environment, LGBT issues, immigration, marijuana, and Israel.

Most notably, Ben & Jerry’s ceased selling its products in the West Bank and East Jerusalem in July 2021 until Unilever ended the boycott nearly a year later by selling the ice cream company’s Israeli business to a local distributor. The rift between Unilever and Ben & Jerry’s over Israel resurfaced because of Unilever board member Nelson Peltz’s affiliation with the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a Jewish human-rights organization.

Peltz stepped down from the Wiesenthal Center’s board after the organization denounced the chairman of Ben & Jerry’s, Anuradha Mittal, for making anti-Israel comments on social media amid Israel’s war against Hamas. Mittal told the Financial Times in January the company supports a “ceasefire” to end the war and likened the conflict to the U.S. war against Iraq and the Russian war in Ukraine.

“From Iraq to Ukraine [the company] has consistently stood up for these principles,” Mittal said. “Today is no different as we call for peace and a permanent and immediate ceasefire.”

Unilever estimates 7,500 jobs will be affected by a productivity program designed to cut roughly $869 million worth of costs over the next three years. The cost reduction is expected to offset the costs affiliated with the separation of the ice cream business.

Separating the ice cream business is part of Unilever’s Growth Action Plan, an initiative to simplify and streamline the company. Unilever CEO Hal Schumacher believes the ice cream divestment will accelerate the growth plan.

“Under the Growth Action Plan we have committed to do fewer things, better, and with greater impact. The changes we are announcing today will help us accelerate that plan, focusing our business and our resources on global or scalable brands where we can apply our leading innovation, technology and go-to-market capabilities across complementary operating models,” he said in a statement.

Shares of Unilever went up nearly 3 percent following the announcement.