Lilleborg

Lilleborg AS is a major hygiene and cleaning article company in Norway, owned by the Orkla Group. It was established in 1833, and was one of the first companies in Norway to start manufacturing brand name products. It currently operates three factories in Norway, and employs a total working staff of 595.

History

Originally a family business, established in 1833 on the banks of the Aker river in Oslo, Lilleborg expanded in 1842 to manufacturing hygiene products with the opening of "sæbesyderiet", the "soap boilery". Here the company's manufacture of soft soap and bathroom soaps took place. In 1897, it became an aksjeselskap, and changed its name to A/S Lilleborg Fabrikker. In the final years of the 19th century, the company was offering a broad range of oils, bathroom, household and soft soaps. It was also the largest company of its sort in Norway, with more than 100 employees on roll.

At the end of the 1920s, Lilleborg had developed a close relationship with Denofa, a cooking oil producing company based in Fredrikstad. This culminated in 1930 with an agreement of cooperation between Lilleborg, Denofa, and the British company Lever Brothers (later Unilever), which had large ownership interests in the companies. As part of this agreement, Lilleborg acquired ownership and production of several well-known Lever Brothers brands, Sunlight being perhaps the foremost. Focusing strongly on brands throughout the 1930s, the company launched several of their strongest-selling brands of today in the years before the war, including Lano, Solidox, Blenda and Lux.